Yemeni civilians struggle with mounting death toll as supplies dwindle

Yemeni civilians coping with a mounting death toll from street clashes and air raids face dwindling supplies of fuel, medicine and food under what has, in effect, become a blockade.

Even before a Saudi-led coalition began pounding the country to halt the advance of Houthi rebels, about 60 per cent of Yemen depended on humanitarian aid that has now slowed or halted.

“We had a humanitarian crisis and fragile state before this happened . . . If this continues, we’re looking at a humanitarian disaster,” says Grant Pritchard, head of advocacy in Yemen for the aid agency Oxfam. “People will struggle to survive.”

Residents in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, are queuing in long fuel lines and hoarding food as prices for basic necessities rise. Fuel shortages are a big worry, aid workers say, because Yemen’s water supply is highly dependent on diesel-fuelled pumps.

Families in main cities are fleeing to the countryside in fear of the air strikes by the coalition, which is backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi against Houthis and allied military forces that have seized Sana'a, the capital, and pushed south.

The regional Sunni Arab coalition sees the rebels’ takeover as an expansion of influence by Riyadh’s big regional rival, Shia Muslim Iran.

The air strikes are adding to the threat of economic collapse in the country of 24 million people. Yemen’s economy, whose growth dropped below 2 per cent last year, is dependent on oil exports.

The economy is still struggling since attacks hit a key export line in 2011 that caused oil output, and export revenues, to plummet.

Access points

The only two access points are now the Hodeida sea port and a Saudi-Yemeni border crossing near Haradh in the northwest, says Ahmed Bazara, a leading member of one of Yemen’s best-known business families. The coalition is restricting access to Yemeni ports in the hope of blocking arms shipments to the Houthi alliance.

“The economy . . . is almost paralysed; we are in wait-and-see mode,” Mr Bazara says. “We would love to see the air raids end as soon as possible and the coalition going back to the negotiation table so we can go back to our normal lives.”

Residents posted pictures on Tuesday of dead bodies strewn along a road in the southern city of Aden, the president’s last bastion and scene of some of the fiercest street fighting.

“It’s like watching a country fall apart in front of your eyes,” says Julien Harneis, Unicef country director, who, like all UN staff, has been evacuated from the country. While ground fighting hurts efforts to treat civilians, several humanitarian workers privately say most of the blame for the humanitarian crisis lies with the coalition, which controls the skies.

There is a pressing need for medical supplies as clinics and hospitals are inundated with wounded, they say. “We have had to use our office space, equipping the rooms with mattresses to receive the wounded,” says Dr Hani Isleem, a doctor in Aden, in a statement released by Médecins Sans Frontières.

International organisations are trying to negotiate sending in supplies by air but have so far been unsuccessful. “If you send something by boat it will take weeks to get there. We don’t have weeks,” says Mr Harneis.

Just a slowing of port access is a worry for supplies. Before the coalition strikes began, the UN’s world food programme listed Yemen as the eighth most food insecure country in the world. Most of Yemen’s food is imported: at least 90 per cent of staples such as wheat and rice come from abroad.

“People are trying to stock up. Food prices are getting up to 60 per cent higher in Sana’a,” says Hussein al-Bukhaiti, who has close ties with Houthi forces. “It is just going to get worse if we don’t get food in.”

The bombing campaign has been going on for more than six days but civilian casualties have been difficult to collate. UN agencies say they have been able to document at least 92 civilian deaths, with children making up more than half the toll. The strikes have been unable to curb advances by the Houthis or allied military forces.

Yemeni activists say air strikes on Tuesday hit civilian targets for a second consecutive day, after a missile killed more than 25 people at a camp for displaced people in the north. Activists say about 10 civilians were killed in a strike on the southwestern town of Yarim. The strikes could not be independently confirmed.

An activist says he visited the hospital where the dead were sent. “We were looking at bodies so burnt and deformed,” says the man, who identified himself as Abu Ali. “We couldn’t tell if they were men, women or children.”

– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015)