News / Interviews

Yemenis facing humanitarian disaster: Analyst

Tuesday, 01 November 2016 2:52 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 01 November 2016 6:38 PM ]

A Yemeni child receives treatment at a hospital in the capital Sana'a on October 29, 2016. (AFP photo)

UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council on Monday that some 21.2 million Yemeni people needed some form of humanitarian aid. O’Brien warned that more than two million people, including 370,000 children, were suffering from malnutrition across the war-torn country, adding that the confirmation of 61 cases of cholera and 1,700 more suspected cases by health sources could complicate matters.

Hussein al-Bukhaiti told Press TV’s Top 5 that the figures about outbreak of cholera and the number of people who have died as a result of Saudi blockade on Yemen are much more than what the UN reports.

There are “over 3,000 of new cases of cholera” in Yemen, Bukhaiti said, adding that “according to the UNICEF in Yemen, 7.5 million Yemenis are living in areas that could be affected by this new illness that has reached Yemen because of the Saudi-led coalition blockade" on the country.

He went on to say that some “10,000 children have been killed because of the blockade” imposed on Yemen by Saudi Arabia, noting that Saudi airstrikes have killed “over 30,000 Yemeni people” since March 2015.

The United Nations and many other organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and European agencies such as Oxfam have acknowledged the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, but the main problem is that countries like the US and the UK are the backbone of the Saudi aggression, he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the analyst criticized Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN special envoy for Yemen, for what Bukhaiti called Cheikh’s biased stance toward the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

Ould Cheikh is playing the role of “a spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition,” because he described an airstrike on a funeral ceremony in the capital Sana’a as an “incident.”

According to the commentator, Ansarullah Houthi movement's spokesman, Mohammed Abdulsalam, has criticized Ould Cheikh for siding with the Saudi aggressors.

Saudi Arabia is conducting airstrikes against the Yemeni people and infrastructure in a bid to return the resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, to power, but the resistance of the Yemeni armed forces and the Houthi Ansarullah Movement has caused Saudi campaign to bitterly fail.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk