ADEN (The Thursday Times) — At least 290,000 people have been driven from their homes in Yemen since the war re-erupted in August, the United Nations said, warning of a dire threat to thousands of pregnant women as the Houthis tighten their grip around the city of Taiz.
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said on Friday that 6,100 pregnant women were among the newly displaced, 600 of them due to give birth within two weeks. It said 65,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Yemen faced a rapidly deteriorating situation as services collapsed and food and fuel prices soared. The UN has sent mobile teams and midwives to displacement sites, and aid groups have reached about 249,000 people with food, hygiene supplies and emergency cash.
The UN has verified 270 civilian casualties since August, including 68 people killed, half of them children. Fighting has closed roads around Taiz, cutting off food, medicine, fuel and water for about two million people. After seizing ground to the south of the city this month, including al-Turbah, the Houthis have tightened their hold on Yemen’s third-largest city.
Attacks on Aden and Saudi Arabia
Yemen’s internationally recognised government said the Houthis fired at least three ballistic missiles on Friday at the Maashiq presidential palace in Aden, the interim capital, and at Aden International Airport, which had reopened a day earlier after repairs. Government forces spokesman Majed Abdullah al-Nuzaili said strikes on Houthi command centres and supply lines in Taiz, Marib, al-Jawf and al-Bayda had killed about 336 Houthi members and commanders.
The war has also spilled across the border. The Saudi-led coalition said on Saturday it had intercepted a “hostile” drone over the Riyadh region, the second in two days, after Saudi Arabia said drones were downed near Makkah, Madinah and Riyadh on Friday. The Houthis denied targeting Saudi territory, though they have claimed attacks on the Saudi capital, airports and oil facilities. Pakistan has condemned the attacks on the kingdom at the UN, and the Houthi strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on October 10 killed at least 13 people.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan discussed Yemen with US, Russian and European counterparts at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta on Saturday, and issued a joint condemnation of the Houthi attacks with Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand.
Yemen’s war began in September 2014, when the Houthis seized Sanaa, and escalated when the Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015. Fighting resumed this year after a series of truces, and the Houthis have since pushed along the coast and taken control of the Bab al-Mandab strait.
