Saudi Arabia prevents 13 ships from unloading food, fuel at Yemen's Hudaydah

The Saudi-led coalition, which has been waging a brutal military campaign against Yemen since 2015, has been preventing more than a dozen ships from unloading critical fuel and food supplies at Red Sea port of Hudaydah.

The Yemeni Petroleum Company (YPC)'s spokesman Amin al-Shabati told Arabic-language al-Masirah television on Thursday that at least 13 vessels carrying basic goods were waiting for several weeks to gain access to the strategic port.

The vessels were being seized despite the fact that they had undergone inspection by the United Nations and obtained the relevant papers, he added.

Al-Shabati further explained that the eight of seized ships were carrying energy derivatives, while the five others contained food destined for the conflict-plagued and impoverished Arab country.

Last month, a Yemeni maritime official said the Saudi-led coalition had impounded more than a dozen ships, which had been marooned at the port of Jizan in southwestern Saudi Arabia. 

The Yemeni Petroleum Company announced in a recent statement that Saudi Arabia adamantly was refusing to allow tankers to sail towards Yemen and offload their consignments there.

Over dozen ships carrying fuel, food impounded in Saudi port: Yemeni official

A Yemeni maritime official says the Saudi-led military coalition has impounded 13 ships carrying fuel and food destined for Yemen in Saudi Arabia’s port of Jizan.

Hudaydah, a lifeline for millions of Yemenis, has seen some of the heaviest fighting in the four-year Saudi aggression against the impoverished nation.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched the Hudaydah offensive in June 2018, but they have faced strong resistance put up by Yemeni armed forces – led by the Houthis -- and the city’s residents.

The Saudi-led coalition claims that the Houthis are using the port for weapons delivery, an allegation rejected by the fighters.

Last December, representatives from the Houthi Ansarullah movement and the Riyadh-sponsored government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi agreed to cease fighting in Hudaydah during peace talks in Sweden.

Under the truce deal, the rival parties also agreed to the withdrawal of their troops and deployment of UN monitors to the port city.

The Houthis have, however, reported numerous truce violations by the Saudi-backed side.

Saudi Arabia has also been enforcing a tight embargo on Sana’a International Airport which acts as a lifeline for the impoverished nation since August 2015, when it also imposed a tight naval blockade on the country, particularly on Hudaydah.

More than four years later, Saudi Arabia has been bogged down in the war, which it had wished to end in a matter of “months”.

A number of Western countries, the US, France and Britain in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply Saudi Arabia with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has so far claimed more than 100,000 lives.

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