... Leid alter Menschen im Krieg – Schwangere Frauen in Gefahr – Eine neue UN-Resolution muss her –Warum sich nichts ändern wird – US-Aufruf zu Waffenstillstand ist Täuschung – Kampf zwischen Al Kaida und IS – MSF beendet Arbeit in Al Dhale – Wie man ein guter Mainstream-Journalist wird – Hodeidah: Vormarsch der Koalitionstruppen, heftige Luftangriffe, Krankenhäuser bedroht, Zivilisten eingeschlossen – und mehr
Nov. 10, 2018: Figures of victims – 34 NGO’s call – Yemen War is genocide – Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Backgrounds (in German) – Famine looming – The photo of girl Amal – The suffering of old people in the war – Pregnant women in danger – A new UN resolution is required –Why nothing will change – US calls for ceasefire a scam – US anti-Iranian paranoia – Strife between Al Qaeda and IS – MSF finishes work in Al Dhale – How to be a good mainstream journalist – Hodeidah: Coalition troops advancing, fierce air raids, hospitals in danger, civilians trapped – and more
Dieses Jemenkrieg-Mosaik besteht aus zwei Teilen / This Yemen War Mosaic is divided in two parts
Teil 2 / Part 2:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-478b-yemen-war-mosaic-478b
Schwerpunkte / Key aspects
Kursiv: Teil 2 / Italics: Part 2
Klassifizierung / Classification
Für wen das Thema ganz neu ist / Who is new to the subject
cp1 Am wichtigsten / Most important
cp1a Am wichtigsten: Seuchen / Most important: Epidemics
cp1b1 Am wichtigsten: Kampf um Hodeidah: Deutsch/ Most important: Hodeidah battle: German
cp1b2 Am wichtigsten: Kampf um Hodeidah: Englisch / Most important: Hodeidah battle: English
cp2 Allgemein / General
cp2a Allgemein: Saudische Blockade / General: Saudi blockade
cp3 Humanitäre Lage / Humanitarian situation
cp4 Flüchtlinge / Refugees
cp5 Nordjemen und Huthis / Northern Yemen and Houthis
cp6 Südjemen und Hadi-Regierung / Southern Yemen and Hadi-government
cp7 UNO und Friedensgespräche / UN and peace talks
cp8 Saudi-Arabien / Saudi Arabia
cp8a Jamal Khashoggi
cp9 USA
cp10 Großbritannien / Great Britain
cp11 Deutschland / Germany
cp12 Andere Länder / Other countries
cp13a Waffenhandel / Arms Trade
cp13b Kulturerbe / Cultural heritage
cp13c Wirtschaft / Economy
cp14 Terrorismus / Terrorism
cp15 Propaganda
cp16 Saudische Luftangriffe / Saudi air raids
cp17 Kriegsereignisse / Theater of War
Klassifizierung / Classification
***
**
*
(Kein Stern / No star)
? = Keine Einschatzung / No rating
A = Aktuell / Current news
B = Hintergrund / Background
C = Chronik / Chronicle
D = Details
E = Wirtschaft / Economy
H = Humanitäre Fragen / Humanitarian questions
K = Krieg / War
P = Politik / Politics
pH = Pro-Houthi
pS = Pro-Saudi
T = Terrorismus / Terrorism
Für wen das Thema ganz neu ist / Who is new to the subject
Einführende Artikel u. Überblicke für alle, die mit den Ereignissen im Jemen noch nicht vertraut sind, hier:
Yemen War: Introductory articles, overviews, for those who are still unfamiliar with the Yemen war here:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-einfuehrende-artikel-u-ueberblicke
Neue Artikel / New articles
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Das ist kein Schicksal
Im Jemen wütet der Hunger. Schuld daran ist keine Dürre, sondern Politik. Saudi-Arabien führt einen erbarmungslosen Krieg – in dem der Westen mitmischt
Saudi-Arabien, das reichste arabische Land, führt dort, im ärmsten Land der Region, einen Krieg ohne Gnade. Seit mehr als drei Jahren wird gekämpft, 18.000 Luftangriffe haben saudische Truppen und ihre Verbündeten geflogen. Sie nutzen einige der teuersten, schlagkräftigsten Waffen unserer Zeit, hergestellt im Westen. Und sie haben mächtige Verbündete: Die USA und Großbritannien stehen an der Seite der saudischen Koalition, sämtliche europäischen Staaten verkaufen den Koalitionären Waffen, auch Deutschland. Und obgleich westliche Staaten tief verwickelt sind in diesen Krieg, hat er erstaunlich wenig Aufmerksamkeit erfahren.
Während die saudische Führung den Mord an dem Journalisten noch leugnete, meldeten die Vereinten Nationen, 14 Millionen Menschen im Jemen drohe der Hungertod. Die Versorgungskrise schwelt seit Monaten. Doch erst jetzt, da die Welt auf Saudi-Arabien blickt, kommt die menschengemachte Katastrophe in die Schlagzeilen.
Nur: Warum ist der Westen überhaupt verstrickt in diesen Krieg? Und warum ist das so wenigen bewusst?
Dieser Krieg ist der Welt nicht zufällig aus dem Blickfeld gerutscht. Das Verdrängen ist politisch.
Nur: Warum ist der Westen überhaupt verstrickt in diesen Krieg? Und warum ist das so wenigen bewusst?
Dieser Krieg ist der Welt nicht zufällig aus dem Blickfeld gerutscht. Das Verdrängen ist politisch.
MbS macht die Beteiligung am Jemen-Krieg zu einer Frage der Loyalität: Nur wer mit ihm kämpft, ist Saudi-Arabiens Freund. So schmiedet er eine Allianz, die übermächtig scheint, darunter Ägypten, die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate, Katar. Auch den Westen zieht er auf seine Seite. Der damalige US-Präsident Barack Obama beschließt, die saudische Koalition zu unterstützen, die saudische Luftwaffe wird seither von amerikanischen Truppen beraten, beliefert, betankt. Auch Großbritannien und Frankreich leisten militärische Unterstützung, alle europäischen Rüstungsproduzenten liefern Kriegsgerät, darunter Kampfjets und Bomben. Deutsche Waffen sind ebenfalls im Einsatz.
Aus westlicher Sicht haben sich im Jemen 2015 drei Gelegenheiten geboten: den Verbündeten Saudi-Arabien – samt dem ambitionierten jungen Prinzen – zu stärken und den Iran in die Schranken zu weisen; Terroristen zu bekämpfen; und mit Waffen Geschäfte zu machen.
Doch der erhoffte schnelle Sieg bleibt aus.
Das ist die erste Dimension des Verdrängens: Der Westen hat gelbes Licht gegeben für diesen Krieg, er hat ihn nicht angezettelt, aber unterstützt – und gut daran verdient. Eine andere Sphäre der Verdrängung ist die Illusion über die Kriegsparteien: Es gibt in diesem Krieg keine Guten.
Je erfolgloser die Kriegsparteien sind, desto mehr lassen sie die Bevölkerung leiden – Von Lea Frehse und Michael Thumann
Mein Kommentar: Ein guter ausführlicher Überblicksartikel, wohl der erste in der “Zeit” seit dem Beginn des Krieges vor 3 ½ Jahren. Das hat leider schon lang gedauert. Das Verdrängen dieses Themas (aus politischen Gründen, wie hier richtig gesehen) war eben auch die Politik der “Zeit”. Sonst hätter man ja wirklich kritisch an die Politik der USA herangehen müssen…
3 ½ Jahre … in denen bei den Luftangriffen und an anderen durch die von den USA unterstützte Saudi-Koalition zu verantwortenden Kriegsfolgen etwa 150.000 Menschen gestorben sein mögen. Vor Jahrzehnten war es noch so, das über die vom eigenen Lager geführten Kriege ausführlich berichtet wurde und die Bevölkerung schließlich einen immer stärkeren Druck auf die Regierung ausgeübt hat, den Krieg zu beenden, siehe Vietnam. Das weiß man mittlerweile: Weniger Berichterstattung macht es leichter, den Krieg fortzusetzen…. Welche Schuld an Tod und Zerstörung laden Medien auf sich, die mehrere Jahre brauchen, bis sie einmal ausführlicher über einen solchen Krieg berichten? Das gilt ja für alle, nicht nur für einzelne.
An mehreren Stellen dieses Artikels wäscht sich die “Zeit” selbst weiß. Der Jemenkrieg “macht aber kaum Schlagzeilen, weil die jemenitischen Kräfte – ob prosaudisch oder nicht – kaum organisierte Medienarbeit betreiben.” ???? Organisierte Medienarbeit der Kriegsparteien: Das nennt man Propaganda, und die gibt es reichlich, aber die kann doch ohnehin nicht Grundlage einer Berichterstattung sein. Und es gab immer genug andere Berichte, aus dem Jemen selbst und von Ausländern, die das Land besucht haben. Warum hat die Zeit bisher noch nie einen Artikel von Iona Craig übernommen??? Sie ist vielleicht tatsächlich die beste überhaupt, oder von anderen???
“Es ist eine Besonderheit dieses Krieges, dass es wenige Bilder gibt”. Das ist schlichtweg falsch!! Es gibt viele Tausende an Bildern, die die Toten, die Verwundeten und die Zerstörungen durch die saudischen Luftangriffe zeigen. Es gibt mindestens Hunderte an Bildern von verhungernden Kindern, niemand hätte dafür auf die “New York Times” (noch so eine westliche Schneckenpost, die aus politischer Rücksichtnahme 3 ½ Jahre brauchte) warten müssen!
Die saudische Informationspolitik “erschwert es, anschaulich über den Jemen zu berichten”: Das ist nur die viertel Wahrheit, es gibt reichlich andere Quellen und Möglichkeiten. Wer sie nicht nutzt, in der Zeit des Internets, ist ein medialer Minderleister. Was sich vielleicht der Rdakteur des “Husumer Kreisboten” im Jahr 1880 noch leisten konnte, “wenn hinten weit in der Türkei…”, das geht heute in Zeiten des Internets halt nicht mehr.
“Nachdem die ersten Luftschläge der saudisch-geführten Koalition vor allem militärische Stellungen der Huthis trafen”: Wo stammt denn das her? Der erste Luftangriff in der Nacht vom 25. auf den 26. März 2015 sollte den Zivilflughafen von Sanaa treffen, traf aber ein nahegelegenes Wohngebiet: 30 Tote. Tote Zivilisten am 27. März: 47. Am 28. März: 71. Am 30. März: 118. Am 31: 163. Am 1. April: 17. Am 2. April: 57. Am 3: 35. Am 5: 40. “Militärische Stellungen”? Neben Wohnviertel haben wir hier auch Markt, Flüchtlingslager, Milch- und Joghurtfabrik, Wohnhaus auf dem Land…
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Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates Are Starving Yemenis to Death
The world was rightly outraged by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but the bombs of Mohammed bin Salman and his Emirati allies are killing dozens each day in Yemen.
As human rights advocates working in Yemen, we are intimately familiar with the violence, the killing of innocents, and the shredding of international norms that have been the hallmarks of Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in our country.
According to the Yemen Data Project, Saudi and Emirati aircraft have conducted over 18,500 air raidson Yemen since the war began—an average of over 14 attacks every day for over 1,300 days. They have bombed schools, hospitals, homes, markets, factories, roads, farms, and even historical sites. Tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children, have been killed or maimed by Saudi airstrikes.
But the Saudis and Emiratis couldn’t continue their bombing campaign in Yemen without U.S. military support.
Saudi crimes in Yemen are not limited to regular and intentional bombing of civilians in violation of international humanitarian law. By escalating the war and destroying essential civilian infrastructure, Saudi Arabia is also responsible for the tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians who have died from preventable disease and starvation brought on by the war. The United Nations concluded that blockades have had “devastating effects on the civilian population” in Yemen, as Saudi and Emirati airstrikes have targeted Yemen’s food production and distribution, including the agricultural sector and the fishing industry.
Meanwhile, the collapse of Yemen’s currency due to the war has prevented millions of civilians from purchasing the food that exists in markets. Food prices have skyrocketed, but civil servants haven’t received regular salaries in two years. Yemenis are being starved to death on purpose, with starvation of civilians used by Saudi Arabia as a weapon of war.
To be clear, there is no party in this war is without blood on its hands; our organization, Mwatana, has documented violations against civilians by all parties to the conflict in Yemen, not only Saudi Arabia.
The people of the Middle East have long and bitter experience with international double standards when it comes to human rights, as purported champions of universal rights in the West regularly ignore grave violations by their allies in the region, from the former shah of Iran to Saddam Hussein to Saudi Arabia’s current crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
This double standard is on display when Western policymakers downplay Saudi and Emirati violations of Yemenis’ human rights by claiming that a close partnership with Riyadh is needed to prevent perceived Iranian threats to the international community, without asking whether that same community is also endangered by Saudi Arabia’s daily violations of basic international norms. And yes, there is a double standard in the wall-to-wall coverage of Khashoggi’s horrific murder, when the daily murder of Yemenis by Saudi Arabia and other parties to the conflict in Yemen hardly merits mention – BY RADHYA ALMUTAWAKEL, ABDULRASHEED ALFAQIH
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/08/saudi-arabia-and-the-united-arab-emirates-are-starving-yemenis-to-death-mbs-khashoggi-famine-yemen-blockade-houthis/ = https://english.alahednews.com.lb/essaydetails.php?eid=45266&cid=499&fbclid=IwAR3cpLPGA4dP4tu94YJlhVxzcrb-T2mZRNUj1rqV5m2M-kHPx0g9BppeKZs
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Crumbling CurrencyYemen Slides into the Horrors of Famine
War-torn Yemen is experiencing the disastrous collapse of its currency. Food, fuel, medication and clean water is becoming astronomically expensive. The result is a looming famine that could become one of the biggest ever.
People aren't just taking to the streets in Mukalla. They are also protesting in the southern metropolis of Aden and in the national capital Sanaa against their living conditions. They are demonstrating on both sides of the front against an adversary that has proven almost as deadly as the armed conflict itself: the collapse of the country's currency.
The Yemeni rial is in freefall, having lost almost three-quarters of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the war -- meaning there is less and less left over from the paltry salaries to at least buy bread, rice and vegetables. More than 90 percent of all foodstuffs must be imported to Yemen in exchange for hard currency.
Those in power on both sides of the conflict have reacted similarly. The Houthi rebels in Sanaa arrested dozens of protesters while the exile government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi beat marchers and opened fire on them. The Houthis closed down currency-exchange kiosks; Hadi fired his prime minister in October and raised interest rates.
"There is now a clear and present danger of an imminent and great big famine engulfing Yemen: much bigger than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives," Mark Lowcock, the top UN coordinator for humanitarian relief, recently told the Security Council. Food, diesel for hospital generators, fuel for cars, water for drinking and cleaning, trash removal: All of that must be paid for with money that is worth less and less. And whether it is gold, land, cars or furniture, people have long since sold whatever they can to survive.
And it isn't because there is no food or medication in the country. The fates of many Yemenis -- on both sides of the front -- have been sealed by the collapse of their spending power.
Mukalla's future has long since become reality in the countryside controlled by the Houthis. Among listless children with sagging skin and bloated bellies, Dr. Mekkia Mahdi tries to save those who often can no longer be saved, including 11-year-olds who only weigh as much as newborns. "Since the beginning of this week, four small children have died, one per day," she tells DER SPIEGEL. The doctor in the hospital in Aslam, located in northeastern Yemen, is surprised about the amount of global attention being paid to the murder of Saudi Arabian dissident Jamal Khashoggi "as millions of Yemeni children are suffering. Nobody cares about them."
Only those who can still afford the trip from their villages to the city, journeys which have become astronomically expensive, even show up in Mahdi's hospital. Fully 8 million people are dependent on food aid. Of 2 million undernourished children, 400,000 are in critical condition, with UN experts forecasting that another 100,000 will join them during just the next few months.
Both sides, the Houthis as well as Hadi's government-in-exile and its Gulf-state protectors, use the suffering as a weapon. The currency collapse, though, can be blamed on a decision made by Saudi-allied President Hadi over two years ago, the consequences of which are only now making themselves felt: the disempowerment of the country's central bank. The bank had been responsible for much more than currency stability and monetary policy. It also managed the state's payroll, paying the salaries of 1.2 million civil servants, police officers and soldiers. Over 6 million people were dependent on those payments.
Even after the civil war began, the bank continued doing that, in addition to paying international debts and overseeing the country's shrinking reserves of hard currency. In short, the bank tried to save the country. Even soldiers on opposing sides of the front continued to receive their pay, as long as they had joined the military by 2014.
The central bank's actions were largely thanks to one man: Central Bank Governor Mohammed Bin Humam. When President Hadi sidelined him and brought the bank under his own control in 2016 before moving it to Aden, he set in motion the catastrophe that now has Yemen in its grip.
Transferring the central bank to Aden was akin to breaking it up. For an entire year after its arrival in Aden, the new bank didn't even have a SWIFT code, meaning it had no access to the global money-wiring system. And the oil revenues continued to make their way into the account in Saudi Arabia. Bin Humam's successors had only one recipe for addressing the currency's ongoing loss of value: printing more of it, hundreds of billions of rials – by Christoph Reuter
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Yemen war: Who are the Houthis and why is Saudi Arabia fighting them?
Everything you need to know about the Shia rebel group and the war in Yemen
cp1 Am wichtigsten / Most important
Allgemeiner: s. oben / More general: above
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Yemeni War Deaths Underestimated by Five To One
ACLED estimates the true number of people killed in Yemen is probably between 70,000 and 80,000.
In April, I made new estimates of the death toll in America’s post-2001 wars in a three-part Consortium News report. I estimated that these wars have now killed several million people. I explained that widely reported but much lower estimates of the numbers of combatants and civilians killed were likely to be only one fifth to one twentieth of the true numbers of people killed in U.S. war zones. Now one of the NGOs responsible for understating war deaths in Yemen has acknowledged that it was underestimating them by at least five to one, as I suggested in my report.
One of the sources I examined for my report was a U.K.-based NGO named ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project), which has compiled counts of war deaths in Libya, Somalia and Yemen. At that time, ACLED estimated that about 10,000 people had been killed in the war in Yemen, about the same number as the WHO (World Health Organization), whose surveys are regularly cited as estimates of war deaths in Yemen by UN agencies and the world's media. Now ACLED estimates the true number of people killed in Yemen is probably between 70,000 and 80,000.
ACLED's estimates do not include the thousands of Yemenis who have died from the indirect causes of the war, such as starvation, malnutrition and preventable diseases like diphtheria and cholera. UNICEF reported in December 2016 that a child was dying every ten minutes in Yemen, and the humanitarian crisis has only worsened since then, so the total of all deaths caused directly and indirectly by the war must by now number in the hundreds of thousands.
Another NGO, the Yemen Data Project, revealed in September 2016 that at least a thirdof Saudi-led air-strikes, many of which are conducted by U.S.-built and U.S.-refueled warplanes using U.S.-made bombs, were hitting hospitals, schools, markets, mosques and other civilian targets. This has left at least half the hospitals and health facilities in Yemen damaged or destroyed, hardly able to treat the casualties of the war or serve their communities, let alone to compile meaningful figures for the WHO’s surveys.
In any case, even comprehensive surveys of fully functioning hospitals would only capture a fraction of the violent deaths in a war-torn country like Yemen, where most of those killed in the war do not die in hospitals. And yet the UN and the world's media have continued to cite the WHO surveys as reliable estimates of the total number of people killed in Yemen.
The reason I claimed that such estimates of civilian deaths in U.S. war zones were likely to be so dramatically and tragically wrong was because that is what epidemiologists have found whenever they have conducted serious mortality studies based on well-established statistical principles in war zones around the world.
Andrea Carboni of ACLED told Patrick Cockburn of the Independent newspaper in the U.K. that he believes ACLED's estimate of the number killed in 3-1/2 years of war on Yemen will be between 70,000 and 80,000 once it has finished reviewing its sources back to March 2015, when Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and their allies launched this horrific war.
But the true number of people killed in Yemen is inevitably even higher than ACLED's revised estimate. As I explained in my Consortium News report, no such effort to count the dead by reviewing media reports, records from hospitals and other "passive" sources, no matter how thoroughly, can ever fully count the dead amid the widespread violence and chaos of a country ravaged by war.
This is why epidemiologists have developed statistical techniques to produce more accurate estimates of how many people have really been killed in war zones around the world. The world is still waiting for that kind of genuine accounting of the true human cost of the Saudi-U.S. war on Yemen and, indeed, of all America's post-9/11 wars – by Nicholas J. S. Davies
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/08/yemeni-war-deaths-underestimated-five-one = https://www.globalresearch.ca/yemeni-war-deaths-underestimated-by-five-to-one/5659389
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35 Organizations Call for Immediate Cessation of Hostilities in Yemen
As humanitarian, human rights and peacebuilding organisations working on Yemen, we welcome tomorrow’s unprecedented coming together of legislators from across nations and parties for the first International Parliamentary Conference for Peace in Yemen to demand their governments work together to end the crisis.
With 14 million men, women and children on the brink of famine – half the country’s population – there has never been a more urgent time to act.
We call on governments to secure an immediate cessation of hostilities, suspend the supply of arms at risk of being used in Yemen, guarantee unimpeded access and movement for vital imports, condemn any attacks on civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law by any party and support international investigations into these violations, including the work of UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen.
Events in recent weeks have added to a long list of examples of disregard by Saudi Arabia for the international rules-based system and have brought renewed focus on the need for the international community, particularly the US, the UK and France, to reassess their partnerships with Riyadh.
Any supporter of and arms supplier to the Saudi-Emirati-led coalition bears a special moral and legal responsibility to ensure that the coalition complies with international humanitarian law in Yemen.
In light of the ongoing unlawful attacks against civilians by all parties in Yemen, widely documented by the UN Group of Eminent Experts, we add our voices to those of over one million of the global public and reiterate the call we have been making for years to all governments to suspend the supply of all arms at risk of being used in Yemen.
The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is manmade and a direct consequence of the warring parties’ severe restrictions on access to food, fuel, medical imports and humanitarian aid.
The collapse of the Yemeni Rial and the non- payment of public sector workers is adding to the catastrophe.
In addition, civilian deaths have increased dramatically in recent months - with 450 civilians killed in just 9 days in August - and violence against women and girls has risen significantly since the conflict escalated.
We call on governments to redouble their efforts to guarantee unimpeded access to essential items, including fuel, in and throughout Yemen, including through the lifeline port of Hodeidah, where civilians have been caught in renewed fighting over the past few days.
Any indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructures, and other violations of international humanitarian law by any party should be publicly condemned by the international community.
Parliamentarians have a special responsibility to represent the voice of their constituents and hold their governments to account.
On the eve of the inaugural Paris Peace Forum convened by President Macron to promote peace and improve global governance, we hope this conference will be a wake-up call.
There is no military solution to the war in Yemen. Only an inclusive peace process can solve the humanitarian crisis.
After almost four years of conflict, Yemenis can’t wait any longer.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6365141/14-million-brink-famine-Yemen-charities.html = https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/35-organizations-call-immediate-ceasefire-yemen
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Is What’s Happening in Yemen Really Genocide?
Saudi Arabia has spent more than three years bombing Yemen into oblivion and creating a humanitarian crisis. But is what’s happening in Yemen genocide?
What Qualifies as Genocide?
There isn’t a concrete definition of the word “genocide” and, unfortunately, the word gets thrown around a lot when it doesn’t actually apply.
Is the Saudi War Against Yemen Genocide?
It isn’t easy to keep track of the numerous war crimes in Yemen. Saudi royals, diplomats, and other elites own shares of many mainstream media outlets which has a significant impact on coverage — both in terms of quantity and quality.
If you read an article about the war in Yemen from the Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, or Fox, chances are that the information came from Saudi media, diplomats, or military members.
To top it off, Riyadh has a history of bribing the UN to stop independent inquiries, keep itself off child maiming blacklists, and avoid charges in the ICC.
Here is a detailed look at the U.S.-backed Saudi war against this tiny impoverished country to determine if what’s happening in Yemen is genocide.
Killing Civilians for the Crime of Simply Being Yemeni
The U.S.-Saudi coalition warplanes deliberately target civilian infrastructure. They arbitrarily attack homes, farms, factories, schools, buses, gas stations, government buildings, water treatment facilities, and anything else imaginable.
It seems their goal is to create as many civilian casualties as possible.
Famine and disease isn’t just an unintentional byproduct of the blockade — it’s a weapon of war.
Saudi Arabia imposed its blockade over Yemen shortly after revolutionary forces took control of the country’s capital, Sana’a, in 2015. This land, air, and sea blockade severely restricts imports, exports, and the flow of movement.
This embargo combined with a shortage of medical and sanitation equipment eventually triggered a cholera epidemic.
Again, Riyadh’s airstrike targets seem to prove that these epidemics are, in fact, a weapon of war. It’s common for the Saudi coalition to target water treatment facilities and hospitals — even at the height of the cholera outbreak. Last summer, also at the height of the cholera epidemic, Saudi Arabia refused to allow fuel into Yemen to power water pumps.
Psychological Harm
The airstrike targets and blockade provide evidence that the Saudi-led coalition intends to cause Yemeni civilians psychological harm.
Sometimes drones and warplanes will simply hover over civilian neighborhoods without dropping bombs — just to create a heightened state of fear.
Homes are frequent airstrike targets likely designed to instill fear and deteriorate the mental state of civilians.
The blockade and embargo serve as additional tools for manipulating the mental state of Yemenis through disease, famine, and despair.
Inflicting psychological harm indicates that what’s happening in Yemen is genocide.
Destroying Culture and Heritage
Many people may not realize that the Saudi coalition has used this war to destroy most of Yemen’s culture and ancient sites.
“After 3 years of assessing the damage, I believe the bombing is being done with a purpose since many of these sites are not suitable or useful for military use,” said Mohanad Ahmad al-Sayani, chair of Yemen’s General Organization of Antiquities and Museums in Sana’a.
The Saudi royal family adheres to an intolerant ideology known as Wahhabism. They force this ideology onto their civilian population as well and punish anyone (sometimes with death) who does not follow this specific sect of Islam.
Besides mosques, Saudi airstrikes have also destroyed many of Yemen’s prized archaeological sites.
“The strange thing is that the rate of fetal abnormalities is growing and doctors cannot explain the causes, meaning that the phenomenon could be attributed to war and ordinances, given the fact that a great proportion of women with deformed fetuses hailed from bombarded areas in the provinces of Sa’adah, Sana’a, Ta’izz, and Hudaydah,” Yemeni Doctor Abdulkarim al-Najjar said.
The blockade also makes adequate medical care difficult to come by and pregnant women are the most vulnerable. This certainly can’t be a coincidence. Disease and famine have dire effects on developing fetuses.
Preventing healthy births suggests that Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen is genocide.
Rape as a Weapon of War
Controlling Children
Saudi Arabia’s current — and historical — oppression of Yemen has devastating effects on the well-being of children in several ways.
Human trafficking is an epidemic in Yemen. In many cases, young boys are the main victims. These young boys are often transported across the northern border into Saudi Arabia where they work as unskilled labor or whatever else the abductors want.
By Saudi Arabia’s Own Justification, Their War in Yemen is Genocide
Official Saudi Narrative: Ethnic Arabs Vs. Crypto-Persians
The Saudi accusation of Iran’s involvement in Yemen goes much deeper than what Western readers may realize. Rather than just accusing Ansarullah of receiving Iranian military support, Saudi military officials and clerics call members of Ansarullah “crypto-Persians.”
By using this false narrative, Riyadh does not need to present evidence of Iran armingAnsarullah because (with this false narrative) Ansarullah members are ethnically Iranian. Since (under this false narrative) Ansarullah members are Iranian, Saudi Arabia can paint itself as the Arab savior rescuing Arab Yemenis from the crypto-Persians.
Ansarullah (aka. “the Houthis”) is a broad political movement. Contrary to what the mainstream media says with terms such as “Shiite militias,” this movement contains several Islamic sects and political groups united under one banner of resistance to foreign interference.
However, if we use the official Saudi narrative about crypto-Persians, then what’s happening in Yemen is genocide against Persians.
What’s Happening in Yemen is Genocide – by Randi Nord
https://www.mintpressnews.com/yemen-genocide/243247
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Film: Saudi-Arabien und Deutschland: Zwei Monarchien zerfallen
In der Zwischenzeit tobt es um Saudi-Arabien: Neben dem brutalen Jemenkrieg, an dem Saudi-Arabien eifrig und vehement teilnimmt, kommt nun auch ein dissidentischer Journalist brutal zu Tode. Wie sind diese Erschütterungen durch saudisches Handeln auf der Weltbühne zu verorten? Jasmin Kosubek erfährt die Hintergründe zum Drama im Nahen Osten im Gespräch mit Aktham Suliman - dem früheren Deutschland-Korrespondenten des arabischen Senders Al Jazeera. Des Weiteren ergründet „Der Fehlende Part“ diese Woche Deutschlands Rolle in der Bewaffnung Saudi-Arabiens und wie das saudische Königsgeschlecht über gewiefte PR-Strategien das eigene Image in der Welt aufpoliert. [ab Min. 3:30]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c2c3E4346k
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Yemen: Major UN aid boost for ‘up to 14 million’ as country risks becoming a land of ‘living ghosts’
Efforts are being made to step up life-saving aid from eight million, to 14 million stricken Yemenis a month, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday, before urging warring parties to spare the key Red Sea port of Hudaydah, which is a lifeline for the whole country.
The UN relief agency made the appeal amid a renewed spike of fighting around Hudaydah city and its port, which receives up to 70 per cent of the country’s aid.
In Geneva, WFP spokesperson çl said that Yemen risked becoming a nation of “living ghosts” unless the fighting ceased, in reference to Government forces supported by a Saudi-led coalition, who have been battling militia from the Houthi movement opposition, since conflict escalated in March 2015.
“We are more-or-less confident that we can still import the food that we want,” Mr Verhoosel said. “Obviously, the port needs to stay open. Today we have enough stock in the country for the urgent need for this month and next month. But for the future, (with) the plans we have to reach many more millions of people, we will need more access.”
Yemen is already the largest hunger crisis in the world, with millions of people living on the edge of famine in one of the poorest countries on the planet, the UN has warned repeatedly.
The decision to try to almost double food aid to the country comes ahead of the release of new data - on the scale of food insecurity, known as an Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) assessment.
The last IPC report in Yemen - from March 2017 – found that an estimated 6.8 million people faced emergency levels of food insecurity and were close to famine.
That number “could rise to 12 or even 14 million people”, Mr Verhoosel told journalists, noting that “intense” fighting in and around Hudaydah in the west of the country has caused “major delays” in the delivery of humanitarian and commercial cargo.
“Whatever the military situation is in and around the city, it is crucial that all parties involved … leave the port functioning without any delay, avoid those delays and (the) eventual future closure of the port,” Mr Verhoosel said.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1025301
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A packet of rice for a family of nine: Why Yemenis are starving
Thousands of NGOs work in Yemen, and food is available in markets - but millions of Yemenis remain on the brink of starvation
Bashir al-Sofi remembers making a living as a construction worker. That was before the war.
Work is scarce today, and the 48-year-old father of seven now struggles to feed his family in his village south of the city of Taiz. His children don’t get three meals a day and they haven’t eaten meat or fruit in a long time. Such staples have now become a luxury.
“One of my children suffers from malnutrition because he was born at the beginning of the war and I couldn't provide him with milk and proper food," Sofi tells Middle East Eye.
Most days, the family subsists on bread and tea for breakfast, rice or aseed - a traditional Yemeni dish made with wheat, salt and water - for lunch, and bread and tea again for dinner.
With approximately 500 grammes of rice, 1kg of flour, and the occasional 500 grammes of fava beans split between nine people, each member of the Sofi family eats an estimated 500 calories a day - less than a quarter of what is needed for a healthy balanced diet.
Photographs of skeletal Yemeni children have shocked the world into paying attention to the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country, where 18 million of the country’s 28 million inhabitants are food insecure and eight million rely completely on external assistance, according to the UN's World Food Programme.
According to Save the Children, more than 50,000 Yemeni children died of starvation and disease in 2017 alone - roughly as many as the estimated number of casualties of armed violence in the country - 56,000 - since January 2016.
The reasons behind the slow starvation of Yemen are complex, but for many in the country, the consequences are deadly.
Agriculture targeted
After nearly four years of war, the violence has damaged the country’s food supply.
The battle for the coastal city of Hodeidah, which has recently escalated after months of stalemate, has long been viewed as crucial due to the city’s strategic port, which receives an estimated three-quarters of Yemen’s humanitarian and commercial cargo.
Vital food infrastructure in areas held by Houthi rebels has been targeted by the Saudi-led coalition since the early stages of the war, London School of Economics professor Martha Mundy highlighted last year.
But just as importantly, Mundy noted, “agricultural land was the target most frequently hit” by coalition air strikes in almost every governorate in Yemen, despite representing only three percent of the country’s lands.
“In short to target agriculture requires a certain aim,” she wrote, adding that “placing the rural damage alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas, we find strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production in the areas" controlled by the Houthis and other pro-Houthi groups.
While agriculture and food distribution suffer from the war, food remains available in markets across the country - but few can afford it.
"All kinds of food and other items are available in the market. The problem is not a shortage of food in markets but that we do not have money to buy food that is now expensive," Sofi said.
The collapse of the Yemeni currency, which went from 215 rials to the dollar in 2015 to 750 rials for one dollar in 2018, has been blamed for the sharp rise in the prices of everyday necessities.
A 50kg bag of wheat that used to cost some 4,500 Yemeni rials in 2015 is now sold for 13,000 rials, and many other commodities have witnessed similar price increases.
NGOs powerless to stop the tide of hunger
Like many other Yemenis, Sofi, the father of seven, gets up early every morning to try to register with several organisations in Taiz to receive food aid.
"Most needy people depend on organisations to provide them with food as the war has deprived us of our sources of income," he explained. "Each organisation provides us with only a small quantity of food and this is not enough. Moreover, this aid does not last long because there are people in need of assistance in different areas."
Thabet added that some civil society organisations rely on international NGOs to provide them with food, but that even the foreign organisations can't supply enough to fulfil the demand.
Meanwhile, a source from the Ministry of Social Affairs in Sanaa said most civil society organisations "don't play any role in stopping the coming famine", either because their work is focused on raising awareness, or they simply don't have the budget for it.
The ministry source, who requested anonymity, also said a number of local organisations were embezzling donations. While not naming any organisations, the source said the ministry revoked some groups' licences, but that many continued their work, even without a licence.
"Corruption is everywhere,” the source said. "I call on all the civil society organisations to remember that they are collecting money for the sake of helping needy people and not for themselves.”
The war is the reason
“The only solution is peace. Without an end to the war, organisations cannot stop famine - and instead many diseases may appear in society."
“Conflict and famine are intertwined. It displaces populations, it disrupts agricultural and food markets," Dinnick said. “The path to solving hunger starts with peace. It's the first way to help those who need food and water."
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/why-are-yemenis-starving-1490708556
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Picture of Amal.. When Yemen's journalists re-reminded the world of the Forgotten War
The Yemen war is no longer forgotten for the world after witnessing the image of the child, picture of Amal the seven-year-old daughter lying on a bed at a local hospital, the picture intensified the tragic situation of the war in the poorest Arab country.
The story raised the pain and anger of the readers, and pressure increased on the Saudi-Emirati coalition to end its war that caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million, or 75 percent of the population, need some kind of assistance or protection.
Yemenis are hopeful that a picture of Amal will cause a halt to the war, and a professor of history Nabil Saleh told Al Jazeera, "The story of Amal that reflects our suffering, and we hope that its image will change the policy of supporting war."
The picture contained a human dimension that aroused great sympathy and topped with the major international media, and it was telling the suffering from the most influential angle; the image of a starving childhood, observers say.
Art critic and writer Jamal Hasan said that the picture was "an extreme manifestation of the severe human deterioration, the heavy damage caused by the war to the Yemenis, and an expressive intensity of the most fierce killing, and a predator who is surprised by torturing Yemenis and killing them is hunger, and the picture was like a sad mass."
"The image has been able to tell about the Yemeni tragedy in its tragic form, and its impact was clear, as some said it was not expected that the tragedy in Yemen had reached that limit," he added.
Backstage photo
The picture that brought the world's attention to the tragedy of Yemen is the efforts of local journalists who have dedicated themselves to the humanitarian crisis.
Among them, journalist Issa Al-Rajhi, who has been working assiduously to occupy the human suffering of war, is the greatest concern of international public opinion, far removed from political strife.
Al-Rajhi told al-Jazeera that he was visiting a health center in Hajjah Governorate, where he was surprised by dozens of children whose bodies had been transformed into skeletons, and when he asked about their situation, hunger had killed whole chickens.
"I visited the area and found that the wood leaf (al-Halas) became the main meal for the families, found children who could not carry their bodies, started taking pictures of them, and I felt that I took them in my heart, not with the viewfinder," he added. Al-Rajhi tried to complete the filming, but he did not tear his tears, so he was close to the neighborhood and cried.
Amal was one of the children that al-Rajhi journalist took pictures of, but after days she died, and as the news of her death spread, readers asked the most popular question for war photographers--including al-Rajhi, who was not known to them--why didn't he save her?
Al-Rajhi, who works as a journalist who cooperates with a number of international media outlets, said, "I wish I had Amal (alone) that she was malnourished, so I carried her on my back and hastened to save her, but I found hundreds of people like her, and it is more than I can."
He adds that his main task is to convey the suffering and hope of 18 million Yemenis threatened by a similar fate and to request the intervention of the international community and organizations to save them, which happened as the Associated Press published the story.
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160758
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HelpAge International: Older people's lives at risk as war in Yemen leaves them struggling for food, income and medication
We know that older people and people with disabilities are at greater risk of being left behind when fleeing conflict, and that those that do escape are likely to face barriers in accessing information and services. They are often overlooked by government and humanitarian services.
Through a HelpAge International assessment of older people in Yemen's Hadramout governorate, we have been able to identify these major and urgent challenges:
95% of older women and men have no access to any income;
Just 2% of women and 3% of men can afford much-needed medication;
50% of older women and 60% of older men surveyed were unable to access healthcare.
We estimate that 1.65 million older people are at risk and in need of humanitarian assistance. Mark Lowcock, UNOCHA's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, has stated that "the immune systems of millions of people are now literally collapsing, making them – especially children and the elderly – more likely to succumb to malnutrition, cholera and other diseases".
Hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, and conflict has prevented medical supplies, water and food reaching those in need. The UN has reported that people are unable to reach care and are dying at home. Only half of health facilities are functioning and many Yemenis are too poor to access these. Older people with chronic illnesses – who rely on life-saving medication every day – are particularly at risk. For example, insulin medication for diabetes needs to be refrigerated to ensure it is effective, but lack of power means these supplies go to waste even when they are available.
Malnutrition levels among older people are also alarmingly high. Older people's mobility can prevent them from overcoming barriers to accessing food distribution sites in Yemen. Even if they can reach them, the standard rations available are not suitable for many older people who may struggle to digest them.
World Health Organization figures from 2017 showed that 31% of cholera deaths were older people, despite making up only 5% of the 1.2 million suspected cases. This disproportionate number of deaths can be attributed in part to older people not being able to access humanitarian services, or relying on unsustainable coping mechanisms such as paying others to fetch clean water for them when they are physically unable to do so.
http://www.helpage.org/newsroom/press-room/press-releases/older-peoples-lives-at-risk-as-war-in-yemen-leaves-them-struggling-for-food-income-and-medication/ = https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/older-peoples-lives-risk-war-yemen-leaves-them-struggling-food-income-and-medication
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United Nations Population Fund: Looming famine threatens the lives of 2 million pregnant women in Yemen
“Some days I cannot provide food [for my children],” said 28-year-old Umm, a mother of three. “My husband was killed in the war and left me to raise them. Every day gets worse.”
As fighting and airstrikes thrust millions to the brink of starvation, Yemen’s looming famine threatens to become the worst in recent world history.
“Now, with the blockade, we eat only one meal some days – bread and water,” 40-year-old Kefaya, a mother of six, told UNFPA. “I do not know how my kids will survive.”
Women and girls did not bring about the conflict, but they are bearing the heaviest burden.
The perils of pregnancy
An estimated two million pregnant and lactating women will be at risk of death if famine strikes. Some 1.1 millionare already acutely malnourished, heightening the chance of miscarriage and stillbirth.
“When I gave birth to my second child, he was deformed and died instantly,” said Amna, 30. “I had not gotten enough medication and food during my pregnancy.”
While the number of women and newborns who have died from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes since the crisis began remains unknown, mortality rates have almost certainly spiked – and this in a country already suffering one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the region.
“I waited for my first-born child for eight years,” 24-year-old Latifa, married at age 16, told UNFPA. “My husband and I were happy when I became pregnant. But when the time came, I could not go to the hospital.”
Nearly half of all health facilities in Yemen are no longer operating, cutting pregnant women off from emergency obstetric care. Even women who live within distance to a working medical facility often cannot afford its maternal health services.
“So I decided to give birth in the house,” said Latifa. “When the time came, my mother went to get our neighbor, a midwife. They were late, and the child died inside me. He was born blue, dead.”
Her anguish was insufferable.
“I thought of committing suicide, but I refrained for my husband,” she said.
The life-saving work of midwives
Many of these losses are preventable
https://www.unfpa.org/news/looming-famine-threatens-lives-2-million-pregnant-women-yemen# = https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/looming-famine-threatens-lives-2-million-pregnant-women-yemen
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Where Does the UN Security Council Stand on Yemen?
The United Nations Security Council has done far too little amid the unceasing tragedy in Yemen. The United States, Britain and France have spoken out repeatedly — with nominal success — in the Council on the war in Syria, focusing on the political process, the humanitarian fault lines and the use of chemical wea
The Security Council’s steps to address the crisis have been woefully inadequate. (The US has called for a cease-fire within 30 days, by Nov. 27, and Martin Griffiths, the UN envoy for Yemen, is scheduled to address the Council on Nov. 16.) Sanctions were imposed on a few individuals on the Houthi side (and on their former ally, the late long-time president, Ali Abdullah Saleh and his son), but not yet — not once — on individuals responsible for the coalition’s violations.
The Security Council has issued statements, most recently in March, calling on the warring parties to adhere to the laws of war and to ensure that humanitarian aid and commercial goods can move into and within the country. But it has said nothing for months, as famine warnings mount.
The bottom line is that the UN body, whose job has been to ensure international peace and security since 1945, is failing to do so in Yemen. A large part of the blame falls on the shoulders of the Security Council member with primary responsibility for drafting resolutions regarding Yemen: Britain, which continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, enabling the military forces committing war crimes. The US and France, which have also risked complicity in war crimes by selling weapons to abusive Saudi forces, share responsibility for the lack of principled Security Council action.
The Council should adopt a new resolution. In a positive step, the British foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, said on Nov. 5 that his country was committed to taking action at the Security Council, after rumors circulated that Britain was working on a draft resolution.
For the most meaningful impact, a resolution should demand an end to unlawful attacks, emphasize that accountability is not optional, remind the state parties of their obligation to provide redress to civilian victims and establish a monitoring and reporting system that tracks compliance with Security Council calls.
Any resolution that doesn’t specifically mention the Saudi-led coalition by name and reverts to vague appeals to “all parties” won’t have the required effect in Riyadh.
Second, the Council should sanction the individuals most responsible for these atrocities. Any country can suggest names to the UN Yemen sanctions committee, triggering immediate consideration of Security Council action. It is long past time to do that. Three concrete but certainly not exhaustive suggestions:
- Impose sanctions on those who share the greatest responsibility for the numerous laws-of-war violations committed during the coalition’s aerial campaign, notably Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and senior commanders, until the coalition ends its unlawful attacks, credibly investigates them and provides civilian victims redress.
- Impose sanctions on Houthi officials who bear the greatest responsibility for enforced disappearances, torture and hostage-taking, including as a matter of command responsibility, until the armed group releases those held arbitrarily, stops these abuses and appropriately punishes those responsible for violations.
- Impose sanctionson those obstructing humanitarian aid.
In Yemen, death and despair have infiltrated almost every district, war crime has followed war crime, and a humanitarian crisis has spiraled so out of control it is difficult for even aid professionals to fathom its depths. The Security Council has waited for too long to act on the carnage against the Yemeni people – by Kristine Beckerle, HRW
https://www.passblue.com/2018/11/07/where-does-the-un-security-council-stand-on-yemen/
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Yemen, Khashoggi, and Why Things Won’t Change
Whether or not the story of one man deserved more attention than the 10 000 lives lost since the start of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the reaction to the Khashoggi Affair has provided the international community a pivotal moment to scrutinize the Kingdom and hold it accountable for human rights violations. However, given the interests at stake for countries allied to the Kingdom, and the set precedents of gained momentums by particular events concerning Saudi’s human rights abuses which have caused few subsequent international initiatives, even such a possibility remains slim.
Following the airstrike of last August on a school bus that cost the lives of over fifty Yemeni civilians, the majority of whom were children, the United Nations Security Council called for a “credible and transparent” investigation. However, it did not authorize an independent investigation, thus not removing the possibility of an investigation carried out by the coalition members. Attempts at authorizing an independent investigation were obstructed by the UNSC membership of three weapon-supplying countries to the coalition. Yet previous internal investigations by the coalition have fallen short of holding the latter accountable for civilian casualties.
The international response to the bus attack in Dahyan failed to generate more than condemnation and small gestures to silence global outrage.
If neither the international uproar caused by the Khashoggi affair and the bombing of a school bus in August were sufficient to make these countries flinch and rescind their deal with the Saudis, then it suffices to say that, most likely, nothing will. Under these circumstances, the only hope for a change of status quo is a change of government less in favor of arms trade with the Saudis.
So long as such foreign powers do not rescind their role in the war, the fate of Yemenis will continue to be shaped by actors other than themselves. While continuously being left out at the negotiation tables, Yemenis will continue to ultimately bear the brunt of the agreements foreign powers much benefit from. But it seems as though the international outrage caused by one man’s death will not be enough to turn the tide in Yemenis’ favour.
Not even the full-scale attack on the port of Hodeidah in Yemen this June was enough to do that. Neither was the death of 10 000 Yemenis, nor the naming of the conflict as the “worst humanitarian crisis” in the world by the UN, nor the displacement of 8 million people who now depend on international aid, were sufficient to do just that.
While it is true the international coverage surrounding this event was significant enough to potentially alter the status quo, it seems the benefits of maintaining the current state of affairs offset the harm that actions involving more than condemnations could induce on arm-supplying countries to Riyadh – By Asma Saad
https://mjps.ssmu.ca/2018/11/09/yemen-khashoggi-things-wont-change/
My comment: It’s not 10.000 lifes lost – it’s at minimum ca. 56.000, and you must add the victims, of blockade, hunger, missing medical help, as consequences of the war, thus 150,000 would be more realistic.
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Don't be fooled by US calls for Yemen ceasefire. It's PR spin for more war
The request for a cessation of hostilities within 30 days is yet another PR exercise designed to justify, rather than to reign in, this brutal war
Yet this latest call does appear to be at odds with the hitherto existing strategy; it was only in June, after all, when the US and UK torpedoed a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the face of impending famine. Many commentaries (such as this one in the Telegraph, for example), have suggested that the US is now taking advantage of pressure on Saudi Arabia following the murder of Saudi insider-turned-dissident Khashoggi to push the kingdom towards a less belligerent position in the disastrous Yemen war. The ever-more desperate humanitarian situation is giving the war a bad name and – so the story goes – the US are now keen to end it.
Unfortunately, it is likely to prove nothing of the sort. The detail of the announcement makes clear that, far from representing some kind of Damascene change of heart, the ‘call for a ceasefire’ is little more than yet another rebranding exercise, a cynical attempt to whitewash escalating carnage with the rhetoric of peace.
With every passing day, the war in Yemen becomes harder to defend.
Earlier this week, just as Mattis and Pompeo delivered their soothing words, 30,000 troops began massing to launch precisely that attack. The problem for the war’s backers in London, Paris and Washington is how to justify the holocaust this is almost certain to unleash on Yemen’s population in the delusional pursuit of reimposing an impotent and discredited quisling.
The ceasefire announcement, then, is about providing cover for the impending attack. Just at the moment the aid agencies have been warning against its devastating consequences, and calling for an immediate end to the bombing, the ‘ceasefire proposal’ gives the Saudis a month’s free pass to conduct their famine-inducing operation on Hodeidah. Rather than demanding the offensive be halted or delayed, the ‘30-day’ call eggs it on. Nor is the 30-day timeframe any kind of limit on the operation.
Pompeo stated that “The time is now for the cessation of hostilities, including missile and UAV strikes from Houthi-controlled areas into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Subsequently, Coalition air strikes must cease in all populated areas in Yemen”. The term ‘subsequently’ is crucial, implying that the Saudis continued bombardment – including in “populated areas” – would be perfectly justified unless the Houthis had implemented a unilateral ceasefire first. This is little more than a call for unconditional surrender by the Houthis, dressed up as a peace initiative. By the same token, it sets the scene for laying all the blame for any continued fighting at the door of the Houthis
The reality is that the US and UK could end the war tomorrow, simply by threatening to cut off military supplies, intelligence, and training to the Saudis until the airstrikes stop
Yet the US are precisely NOT calling for an end to the bombing, nor threatening to use their leverage to bring it about. Instead, this so-called initiative is yet another cynical PR exercise designed to justify, rather than to reign in, this brutal war – by Dan Glazebrook
https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/cynical-piece-political-theatre-us-calls-yemen-ceasefire-977264884 = https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/09/us-calls-for-a-yemen-ceasefire-is-a-cynical-piece-of-political-theatre/
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The Iran Obsession Poisons Everything
Mike Pompeo made another ludicrous statement about who is responsible for the starvation of the people of Yemen.
The Trump administration is frequently guilty of using double standards in how it judges the conduct of certain states, but Pompeo’s statement goes far beyond that and actually tries to blame Iran for the things that the Saudis and Emiratis are doing. Iran can’t do anything to “prevent the starvation” that the Saudi coalition is causing with our government’s support. Iran isn’t the one creating the famine conditions, and it is not within their power to end them. It is, however, within the power of the coalition and the U.S. to alleviate the terrible suffering of the people of Yemen, and every time that Pompeo tries to shift blame and accuses Iran of being responsible for starvation in Yemen he is confirming that the Trump administration has no interest in acknowledging, much less addressing, the real causes of famine there. Praising the Saudis and Emiratis for their paltry aid efforts would be bad enough, but to buy into the idea that these aid efforts are actually being offered in good faith to “mitigate this risk and this harm” is inexcusable. Aid groups on the ground denounced the coalition’s aid plan as a war tactic, and the coalition is doing everything it can to cause greater harm to the civilian population because their goal is to starve Yemen into submission. Pompeo’s assertion that the Saudis should be viewed as humanitarians because they throw a little money at the country they are destroying is a reprehensible piece of propaganda.
Iran hawks have been parroting discredited pro-Saudi talking points on Yemen for so long that they may have started to believe them. Pompeo claims that it is up to the Iranian government to “decide that the Houthis will no longer engage in violence.” That statement betrays the extent of Pompeo’s ignorance about the conflict, and it shows how the Trump administration’s Iran obsession poisons and warps everything else they do in the region. Iran doesn’t control the Houthis, and it doesn’t decide what they will or won’t do.
Pretending that the resolution of the conflict is somehow up to Iran while doing absolutely nothing to rein in the governments that the U.S. has been arming and supporting confirms that the administration’s ceasefire demands are being made for show and have no substance behind them – by Daniel Larison
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-iran-obsession-poisons-everything/
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WHY DID THE JIHADI COLD WAR IN YEMEN END?
Ever since the Islamic State expanded from Iraq into Syria in April 2013, Sunni jihadism has been caught in seemingly endless internal conflict. This is a largely a result of the Islamic State’s aggressive attitude toward other jihadi (and rebel) groups, which ignited the jihadi civil war in January 2014.
The case of Yemen, however, is a bit strange. Since November 2014, the country’s local al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates existed side-by-side in a state of controlled tensions. The relationship took the form of a discursive rivalry but has none of the infighting that characterizes the relationship between their parent organizations in other battlefields. But that changed in July 2018. Since then, more than 100 fighters have died as a result of jihadists directing their guns toward each other.
Competition but Co-existence
In November 2014, al-Baghdadi accepted an oath of allegiance from a group of jihadists in Yemen during the first big wave of Islamic State expansion outside the Levant, leading to the creation of a local Islamic State province. At this time, Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch was still considered one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world. For the next four years, the new Islamic State affiliate’s relationship with al-Qaeda in Yemen was generally one of competition but co-existence. The groups were clearly rivals, but they also seemed to agree that the main enemies were the Houthis as well as the remnants of the Yemeni government and its international allies. While this prioritization of a common “external enemy” may appear obvious, it differed from the situation on other battlefields like Syria and, more recently, Afghanistan.
Of course, prioritizing external enemies did not mean the two groups did not compete. From the very beginning, the Islamic State appeared keen on either convincing al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate to shift allegiance or at least attracting substantial numbers of its fighters.
Both groups directed rhetorical attacks against one another and their respective parent organizations.
From Cold War, to Hot
In early July, an al-Qaeda-friendly channel on Telegram reported that the Islamic State killed 13 fighters from al-Qaeda, who retaliated by killing 25 Islamic State fighters. Three days later, al-Qaeda would again strike Islamic State positions in Qayfa. But tensions between the two groups were already on the rise a week earlier when an alleged defector from the Islamic State provided his testimony, published by the al-Qaeda-aligned Al Badr Media, about the wrongdoings and extremist tendencies of his former brothers-in-arms, not least their (jama’at al-Baghdadi as he refers to it) extensive use of excommunication (takfir).
Soon after the initial military confrontations, the conflict would take a new turn and become more “public” when, on July 15, the Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency uploaded a video showing 13 al-Qaeda fighters who had been arrested after an incident at an Islamic State controlled checkpoint.
Why are al-Qaeda and the Islamic State affiliates in Yemen engaging in infighting now? Their parent organizations have long been caught in a global struggle for dominance which has involved military confrontations in Syria, Somalia, and more indirectly in Afghanistan. The two Yemeni affiliates, however, have managed to co-exist peacefully, even negotiating local agreements to ensure their protection. Paradoxically, this infighting has started when the struggle between the broader al-Qaeda and Islamic State groups is at a historic low since early 2014.
Whether the initial trigger was a simple mistake made by one of the groups at a checkpoint around Qayfa that since escalated or a result of a strategic shift by one of the groups is hard to tell.
Is Infighting Here to Stay?
In September and October, the infighting continued in the groups’ (semi)-official media productions published on Telegram. In fact, in September infighting extended to the (even for jihadists) dangerous sphere of killing civilians, as the Islamic State was accused by al-Qaeda of killing a young girl in Qayfa.
“Desperation” and “fighting to survive” is thus key to understand the group’s current logic and to blame al-Qaeda for initiating the fight against “other mujahideen” is a way to delegitimize its direct competitor.
But rest assured, al-Qaeda would be happy to see the Islamic State in Yemen decimated to the brink of extinction and once again hegemonize Yemen’s militant Islamist landscape – by Tore Refslund
https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/why-did-the-jihadi-cold-war-in-yemen-end/?singlepage=1
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Schliessung eines Projekts im Süden nach Drohungen
Gleichzeitig musste MSF die medizinische Hilfe in der südlichen Provinz Ad-Dhale nach wiederholten Angriffen und Drohungen beenden. Bisher hatten Mitarbeitende ein Spital in der Stadt und drei Gesundheitszentren in der Provinz unterstützt.
«Es gab mehrere Sicherheitsvorfälle, die direkt auf Patienten, Mitarbeiter und die von MSF unterstützten medizinischen Einrichtungen zielten», erklärt Ton Berg von MSF. «Es war eine sehr schwierige Entscheidung für uns, aber sie war unumgänglich, um die Sicherheit unserer Mitarbeiter zu gewährleisten.»
(** A H P)
Projects in Ad Dhale close due to insecurity and threats
This extremely difficult decision to close is a result of repeated attacks and threats of violence on the medical facility, health staff and, most recently, MSF’s residence in the town of Ad Dhale.
“Humanitarian organisations must be able to provide much-needed medical humanitarian assistance without being threatened with violence. This has not been respected in the Ad Dhale town,” says Ton Berg, MSF head of mission in Yemen. “There have been multiple security incidents directly targeting patients, staff and MSF-supported medical facilities in the area. After this series of serious incidents, we are left with no choice but to close all medical and humanitarian activities in Ad Dhale governorate.”
“Our activities have been suspended several times in the past years. In the latest example, in October 2018, our staff house in Ad Dhale was attacked twice in less than a week. In spite of these suspensions and constant negotiations with all stakeholders, security incidents and threats in the town of Ad Dhale continue. With such a threat to safety, MSF sees no possibility of providing quality, impartial healthcare,” Berg added.
The closure of activities affects four MSF-supported health facilities: Al Nasr Hospital in Ad Dhale town, Al Salaam primary healthcare centre in Qatabah, Thee Jalal primary healthcare centre in Al Azariq, and Damt primary healthcare centre.
MSF was one of the few medical organisations delivering humanitarian assistance to the community in Ad Dhale. MSF acknowledges the impact this closure will have on access to healthcare in the governorate, and that it will deprive thousands of Yemenis of much-needed humanitarian and medical assistance.
“We deeply regret that it has come to this point. This has been a very difficult decision for MSF to take, but one that at this point is unavoidable for the safety and security of our staff,” Berg said.
MSF has been working in Ad Dhale since 2012 supporting the provision of free medical care to the people of Ad Dhale, Qatabah, Al Azariq and Damt districts. Over time and through conflict, epidemics and widespread medical needs, MSF’s support has enabled these health facilities to treat more than 400,000 patients across the governorate.
MSF remains committed to supporting the Yemeni people and provides support to more than 12 hospitals and health centres across 11 governorates.
https://www.msf.org/yemen-projects-ad-dhale-close-due-insecurity-and-threats
My comment: Obviously, Houthi government authorities must be blamed for this.
(** B P)
How To Be A Reliable ‘Mainstream’ Journalist
There are certain rules you need to follow as a journalist if you are going to demonstrate to your editors, and the media owners who employ you, that you can be trusted.
For example, if you write about US-Iran relations, you need to ensure that your history book starts in 1979. That was the year Iranian students started a 444-day occupation of the US embassy in Tehran. This was the event that 'led to four decades of mutual hostility', according to BBC News. On no account should you dwell on the CIA-led coup in 1953 that overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader, Mohammad Mossadegh. Even better if you just omit any mention of this.
You should definitely not quote Noam Chomsky who said in 2013 that:
'the crucial fact about Iran, which we should begin with, is that for the past 60 years, not a day has passed in which the U.S. has not been torturing Iranians.' (Our emphasis)
Don't Talk About The Israel Lobby
Attack Julian Assange
Soft-Pedal Fascism
Another rule to abide by as a corporate journalist is to worship the global economy, excusing or even acclaiming the rise of extreme right-wing politicians because that leads to possible gains for big business.
Bury UK Responsibility for Yemen's Nightmare
There are always exceptions to the rules. Patrick Cockburn, a long-time foreign correspondent with The Independent, is an example of a journalist who questions established 'truths'. For almost two years, the corporate media have cited a UN figure of 10,000 Yemenis who have been killed in the US-and UK-backed Saudi war. Recently, Cockburn pointed out that this figure grossly downplays the real, catastrophic death toll which is likely in the range 70,000-80,000.
As a well-established veteran reporter of impressive credentials, Cockburn can report such uncomfortable truths without suffering career oblivion. But woe betide any young journalist trying to make their way in the 'mainstream' who tries to do likewise. Instead, they should follow the example of Patrick Wintour, the Guardian's diplomatic editor, who performs contortions to provide a fictitious 'balance' in a recent piece on Yemen. Wintour refers to mere 'claims' that the UK 'is siding too much with the Saudis'. The Orwellian language continues with the description of Saudi Arabia as a 'defence partner' of Britain.
The sub-heading under the main title of Wintour's article gives prominence to the perspective of the UK Defence Secretary:
'Jeremy Hunt says cessation of hostilities could "alleviate suffering" of Yemeni people.'
As the historian and foreign policy analyst Mark Curtis observed via Twitter:
'This sub-heading is a microcosm of what a joke the Guardian is. After over 3 yrs of UK govt's total backing of mass murder in Yemen, the paper has the temerity to equate UK policy with easing humanitarian suffering. The state could not ask for more.'
Aspiring journalists should take note of the state-corporate requirement to bury the bloody reality of 'defence' and the huge profits that must be protected.
It would also not do for those hoping for a career in journalism to examine the daily contortions and sleight-of-hand pronouncements emanating daily from government departments. Thank goodness, then, for Curtis who regularly highlights the distasteful deceits that are churned out by the UK state.
In short, being a reliable 'mainstream' journalist entails a number of basic rules including: propagating the myth that 'we' are the good guys; conforming to the requirements of wealth and power; keeping one's head down and never challenging authority in any deep or sustained way; and refraining from any public discussion about these rules.
cp1a Am wichtigsten: Seuchen / Most important: Epidemics
(* A H)
12 cases of cholera and one death in Malhan district due to lack of basic medical services. At least 43 cases of #cholera during one week in Alasabee district because of the lack of medicines since 2017 in Almahweet governorate.
https://twitter.com/BelqeesRights/status/1061164052674568192
(* A H)
World Health Organization: Outbreak update – Cholera in Yemen, 8 November 2018
The Ministry of Public Health and Population of Yemen has reported 14491 suspected cases and 13 associated deaths during epidemiological week 42 (15 – 21 October) in 2018. 12% are severe cases. The cumulative total number of suspected cholera cases from 1 January 2018 to 21 October 2018 is 242849 with 246 associated deaths (CFR 0.14%). Children under five represent 31.7% of the total suspected cases. 22 out of 23 governorates and 306 out of 333 districts in Yemen have been affected.
From week 39 to week 41, the trend of weekly reported suspected cholera cases is stable at country level, although seven governorates ( Al Mahwit, Sanaa, Raymah, Al Jawf, Aden, Abyan and Marib) continue to report an increase in suspected cholera cases. This week, the governorates reporting the highest number of suspected cases are Amanat Al Asimah (1555), Sanaa (1 492), Arman(2156), Dhamar (2232), Al Hudaydah (2475), ans Al Hudaydah (2727).
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/outbreak-update-cholera-yemen-8-november-2018
cp1b1 Am wichtigsten: Kampf um Hodeidah: Deutsch/ Most important: Hodeidah battle: German
(** A H K)
Offensive im Jemen-Krieg bedroht Tausende Zivilisten
Hilfsorganisationen schlagen wegen heftiger Kämpfe um die Hafenstadt Hodeidah im Jemen Alarm
Huthi-Rebellen hätten auf einem Krankenhaus Stellung bezogen und brächten damit Patienten und medizinisches Personal in höchste Gefahr, beklagte Amnesty International am Donnerstag. Die militärische Nutzung des Hospitals verstoße gegen internationales humanitäres Recht. Die Klinik werde dadurch aber nicht zu einem legitimen Ziel im Jemen-Krieg.
Die Menschenrechtsorganisation warf der von Saudi-Arabien und den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten angeführten Militärkoalition im Jemen vor, auf rücksichtslose und verheerende Weise zivile Gebiete zu bombardieren. "Ärzte ohne Grenzen" erklärte, die am 1. November begonnene Großoffensive der Koalition auf Hodeidah bringe Tausende Zivilisten in Lebensgefahr. "Jeden Tag hören wir schwere Luftangriffe und Schüsse in der Stadt", erklärte der Landeskoordinator der Organisation, Frederic Bertrand.
Das Internationale Komitee vom Roten Kreuz beklagte verheerende Lebensbedingungen in Hodeidah. Viele Flüchtlinge in der Stadt besäßen nur noch die Kleider, die sie am Leib trügen. Sie überlebten, indem sie einmal am Tag ein wenig Reis oder etwas Mehl mit Wasser zu sich nähmen, wenn sie überhaupt etwas zu essen fänden. Experten warnen vor einer schweren Hungersnot.
https://www.welt-sichten.org/artikel/35270/offensive-im-jemen-krieg-bedroht-tausende-zivilisten
(* A H K)
Film: Die Lebensader des Landes ist bedroht
Über Hudaida kommen die meisten Hilfsgüter nach Jemen. Nun finden immer heftigere Kämpfe in der Stadt statt. Eine IKRK-Vertreterin schildert die schrecklichen Zustände.
Mindestens 200 Menschen, die meisten von ihnen Zivilisten, sind seit Beginn der neuen Offensive ums Leben gekommen. Die Hafenstadt ist die Lebensader des kriegsversehrten Landes.
Wie drastisch die Lage in der Stadt ist, schildert die Sprecherin des IKRK im Jemen, Mirella Hodeib: «In Hudaida ist die Gewalt in den letzten Tagen dramatisch eskaliert. Unsere Teams sprechen von ununterbrochenen und ohrenbetäubenden Zusammenstössen und Explosionen.» Die Stadt sei praktisch ausgestorben. Das IKRK sei äusserst besorgt um die Sicherheit von Zivilisten, aber auch von zivilen Strukturen.
Bedroht ist auch das grösste und wichtigste Spital der Stadt. Die Kämpfe toben nur wenige Meter von hier entfernt. Aber nicht nur die medizinische Versorgung ist bedroht.
«Die Situation könnte sich noch weiter verschlimmern, wenn die Infrastruktur im Hafen von Hudaida zerstört wird», warnt Hodeib. Die Ankunft von lebenswichtigen Gütern und humanitärer Hilfe in ganz Jemen werde damit behindert. «Dies dürfte die ohnehin schon katastrophale humanitäre Situation noch weiter verschärfen.»
https://www.srf.ch/news/international/endloser-krieg-im-jemen-die-lebensader-des-landes-ist-bedroht
(** A H K P)
Mehr als 130 Tote bei Kämpfen um Hafenstadt Hodeida
Binnen 24 Stunden wurden in der strategisch wichtigen Stadt am Roten Meer nach Angaben von Ärzten mehr als 130 Kämpfer getötet, darunter 110 Huthi-Rebellen. Diese leisteten am Freitag weiter erheblichen Widerstand gegen die Offensive der Regierungstruppen. Unterdessen sorgten sich Hilfsorganisationen weiter um die Lage der Zivilisten in dem Bürgerkriegsland. Das Welternährungsprogramm kündigte an, seine Lebensmittelhilfen verdoppeln zu wollen.
Den Ärzten in Hodeida zufolge wurden 110 Rebellen und 22 regierungstreue Kämpfer getötet. Damit stieg die Zahl der Toten auf beiden Seiten seit der Intensivierung der Kämpfe um Hodeida am 1. November auf mindestens 382.
In Hodeida beschrieb ein Vertreter der Hilfsorganisation Islamic Relief, Salem Dschaffer Baobaid, die „Erschöpfung und Angst“ in den Gesichtern seiner Nachbarn, die wegen der nächtlichen Luftangriffe nicht mehr schliefen. „Die Menschen fragen nach mehr Lebensmitteln, aber was wir auch tun, die Hilfsorganisationen können nicht ein ganzes Land ernähren“, sagte er laut der Nachrichtenagentur Irin.
Am Donnerstag waren die von Luftangriffen einer arabischen Militärkoalition unterstützten Regierungstruppen erstmals ins Stadtgebiet von Hodeida vorgedrungen; sie bewegten sich nun in Richtung des Hafens vor. Die Rebellen verstärkten seither ihre Gegenwehr. Es gebe „intensive Angriffe“ mit Granaten auf die von den Regierungstruppen zurückeroberten Stellungen, hieß es aus der jemenitischen Armee. Die Rebellen erklärten, sie hätten die Versorgungswege ihrer Gegner in vier Sektoren der Provinz Hodeida abgeschnitten.
Die Offensive zur Rückeroberung des Hafens ist nach Einschätzung von Beobachtern in den kommenden Tagen zu erwarten. In einem Text des Beratungsinstituts IHS Markit heißt es, es bestehe die Gefahr von „Sabotage“ der Infrastruktur.
Die Anführer der mit der jemenitischen Regierung verbündeten Militärkoalition - Saudi-Arabien und die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate - wollen demnach zunächst Hodeida zurückerobern, bevor sie Friedensgespräche mit den Huthi-Rebellen beginnen. Dies gebe der Regierung eine bessere Verhandlungsposition.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/mehr-als-130-tote-im-jemen-bei-buergerkrieg-15883194.html
Film der Tagesschau: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/jemen-661.html = https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-469589.html
(** A K P)
Die Militärkoalition der Saudi verstärkt die Angriffe in Jemen – und schreckt auch vor Spitälern nicht zurück
Ungeachtet der Rufe nach einem Waffenstillstand haben die Saudi und ihre Verbündeten die Angriffe auf die lebenswichtige Hafenstadt Hudeida intensiviert. Ihre Gegner, die Huthi, denken ebenfalls nicht ans Einlenken. Dabei sollten demnächst Verhandlungen stattfinden.
Noch vor wenigen Tagen sah es danach aus, als gäbe es einen Durchbruch in dem seit mehr als drei Jahren dauernden Krieg in Jemen.
Unterstützt von saudischen Luftangriffen und Soldaten der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate (VAE) haben die Truppen der international anerkannten jemenitischen Regierung ihre Angriffe auf die von den Huthi kontrollierten Gebiete im Land in den letzten Tagen intensiviert. Vor allem in der strategisch wichtigen Hafenstadt Hudeida, die sich seit 2014 in der Hand der Huthi befindet, sind die Kämpfe eskaliert. Nach Angaben von Ärzten haben die Luftangriffe und Gefechte bereits mehr als 200 Tote und noch mehr Verletzte gefordert, unter ihnen auch Dutzende von Zivilisten. Helfer sprechen von einem Albtraum, fast Tag und Nacht gebe es Luftangriffe, von allen Seiten würden Artilleriegeschosse in die umkämpften Quartiere einschlagen. Dabei schrecken beide Seiten auch vor Angriffen auf Spitäler nicht zurück.
Das grösste Spital der Stadt, al-Thawra, in dem Dutzende von unterernährten Kindern behandelt werden, liegt nur wenige Meter von der Frontlinie entfernt. Das Internationale Komitee vom Roten Kreuz (IKRK) warnte angesichts dessen vor einem medizinischen Notstand. Sollten weitere medizinische Einrichtungen durch die Kämpfe beschädigt werden, reichten die Kapazitäten der verbliebenen Einrichtungen möglicherweise nicht, um die vielen Verletzten zu behandeln, teilte die Organisation mit. Tausende sind vor den Kämpfen geflohen, doch Zehntausende sind faktisch eingeschlossen. Viele seien geblieben, weil sie zu grosse Angst hätten, da es keinen Ort gebe, um sich vor den Granaten, Bomben und Kugeln zu verstecken, twitterte das IKRK.
Hudeida ist die Lebensader des kriegsversehrten Landes
Angesichts der Eskalation der Kämpfe um Hudeida haben 34 Hilfsorganisationen einen sofortigen Waffenstillstand gefordert. Aber das saudisch geführte Militärbündnis will jetzt erreichen, woran man seit Beginn der Offensive auf die Hafenstadt im Juni gescheitert ist: die von Iran unterstützten Huthi militärisch zu bezwingen. Das Ziel sei, die Hafenstadt innerhalb von dreissig Tagen einzunehmen, um die Huthi an den Verhandlungstisch zu zwingen, sagte ein Vertreter der jemenitischen Regierung.
(* A K)
Film: Jemen: Kampfhandlungen verschärfen sich während Saudi-Truppen vorrücken
Während die von Saudi-Arabien geführten Koalitionstruppen in den Vorort der strategisch wichtigen jemenitischen Hafenstadt Hodeidah vordrangen, verschärften sich die Kampfhandlungen, wie Filmaufnahmen vom Donnerstag belegen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuY5ZLjtQL8
(* A H K)
Jemen: Viele Kriegsverletzte nach massiven Kämpfe und Luftangriffen
Nach schweren Kämpfen an mehreren Fronten und massiven Luftangriffen verzeichnen Spitäler von MSF im Jemen einen starken Zustrom von Kriegsverletzten. Im Gebiet der umkämpften Hafenstadt Hodeida behandelten Mitarbeiter in einer Woche mehr als 70 Verwundete, darunter viele Zivilisten.
In Hodeida behandelten Mitarbeiter im Al-Salakana-Spital vom 1. bis 6. November 24 verletzte Zivilisten, darunter fünf Frauen und neun Kinder. 17 Patienten waren bei Sprengsätzen verletzt worden, einer erlitt eine Schussverletzung. In der chirurgischen Spezialklinik von Médecins Sans Frontières/Ärzte ohne Grenzen (MSF) in der 180 Kilometer südlich gelegenen Stadt Mocha trafen in diesem Zeitraum 50 Verletzte ein, darunter drei Frauen und acht Kinder.
«Die Bodentruppen sind nach Beginn der Offensive schnell in Gebiete rund um die Stadt vorgedrungen», sagt Bertrand. «Wir befürchten, dass es in Hodeida zu einer Belagerung Zehntausender kommen könnte. Jeden Tag sind in der Stadt schwere Luftangriffe und Schüsse zu hören.»
(* A K P)
Die Belagerung von al-Hudaida: Washington verschärft Kriegsverbrechen im Jemen
Die Stadt wird ununterbrochen aus der Luft und von der See bombardiert. Mitarbeiter der Hilfsorganisation Save the Children haben allein am Wochenende etwa 100 Luftangriffe gezählt, fünfmal mehr als in der ersten Oktoberwoche.
Bei einem Angriff auf ein Wohngebiet kamen zwei Zivilisten ums Leben, 24 weitere wurden verletzt. Bei der Bombardierung einer Fabrik starb ein Arbeiter, fünf Menschen wurden verwundet. Ein junges Mädchen wurde bei einem Artillerieangriff auf eine Moschee verletzt, und fünf Häftlinge bei der Bombardierung des zentralen Gefängnisses der Stadt.
Die Bombenanschläge nähern sich immer mehr dem al-Thawra-Krankenhaus, die letzte funktionierende medizinische Einrichtung, die Kinder behandelt, die kurz vor dem Hungertod stehen. Die Angriffe hindern Hilfesuchende daran, das Krankenhaus zu erreichen. Es wächst die Sorge, dass auch diese Klinik zum Anschlagsziel wird – wie die Mehrheit der Krankenhäuser im Jemen.
Rund 570.000 Menschen in al-Hudaida und der gleichnamigen Provinz sind über Nacht obdachlos geworden. Ihnen ist nichts geblieben als die Kleidung, die sie am Leib trugen, als sie vor den Bombardements und Angriffen fliehen mussten.
Dass die erneute Belagerung den Segen Washingtons hat, ist unbestreitbar. Die Konzentration der Truppen, die Seeblockade und die endlose Bombardierung wären ohne die enge Zusammenarbeit mit dem Pentagon nicht möglich.
https://www.wsws.org/de/articles/2018/11/08/jeme-n08.html
cp1b2 Am wichtigsten: Kampf um Hodeidah: Englisch / Most important: Hodeidah battle: English
Siehe / Look at cp1
(A K)
Saudi-led airstrikes destroy Houthis' operations room in Yemen, killing commanders
Airstrikes launched by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition killed several mid-level Houthi commanders and destroyed their operations room in Yemen's port city of Hodeidah on Friday, a military official told China's Xinhua News Agency.
The F-16 fighter jets of the Saudi-led coalition carried out a number of airstrikes and destroyed an underground Houthi operations room in Hodeidah where some Houthi leaders were meeting, the local military source said on condition of anonymity.
"According to the initial information coming from the bombing site, a number of militants including field commanders were among the killed inside the operations room under Hodeidah's airport," the source said.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-11/10/c_137596903.htm = http://www.bernama.com/en/world/news.php?id=1663432
(* A K pS)
Legitimacy Surprises Houthis, Advances Further into Hodeidah
Yemen’s National Army has advanced further into several Houthi-controlled neighborhoods in Hodeidah, forcing insurgents to flee to the city center, using residents as human shields and their houses as military bases, a military source told Asharq Al-Awsat on Friday.
The source added that Houthis shelled residential neighborhoods in the Khamseen Street, mills of the Red Sea and west of the Hodeidah airport with missiles and mortar shells.
The German news agency quoted other military sources as saying that “Yemeni forces had fully taken control of the May 22 hospital and its neighboring buildings in the Khamseen Street, east of the city.”
Colonel Ahmad Ali al-Johayli, head of the Giants Brigade, said that the Yemeni army forces advanced in the northern and western parts of Hodeidah with the support of the Arab Coalition.
Comment: These so-called "Yemen troops" are Saudi- & UAE-paid mercenaries from various countries including the US, Sudan, Colombia, Senegal, El Salvador, Panama, Australia, South Africa, Chile, and Yemen.
https://twitter.com/shireen818/status/1060702884562698240
Comment to comment: And “legitimacy” of the Hadi government ended in Feb. 2015.
(* A K)
Map, Nov. 9: #Yemen’s government forces and their coalition allies are edging towards the city's vital docks through which nearly 80 percent of Yemen's commercial imports and practically all #UN-supervised humanitarian aid pass.
https://twitter.com/yemen_updates/status/1060897076291297280
(A K pH)
Film: mercenaries targeting the neighborhoods of Hodeidah 09-11-2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4_cSV_PhII
(* A H K)
Film: "We are hearing many more airstrikes and mortar launches, and they are closer and closer to the area where we are working in the hospital."Chris Hook, MSF Medical referent, #Hodeidah
https://twitter.com/msf_yemen/status/1060614161451925504
(* A K)
7,000 Tihama Resistance forces were deployed to al Hudaydah governorate, western Yemen on November 9. Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed a Hezbollah commander and landmine expert, Salam Mohammed, in al Hudaydah city on November 08, according to Saudi media. Salam was the personal guard of Mohammad al Bukhaiti, a member of the al Houthi’s political council.[4]
(A K pS)
Secrets of the week: the killing of a leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah by the fire of the Yemeni army in Hodeidah
A senior Hezbollah leader was killed Thursday by joint forces during the liberation of the western city of Hodeidah.
The sources of "Arab Yemen" that the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah expert, called "Salam Mohammed" was killed by the fire of the joint forces while participating in the leadership of the Houthi militia to confront the Yemeni army forces south of the city of Hodeidah.
http://www.asrar7days.com/yemen/1035097.html
My comment: This sounds like a propaganda claim. Several times, claims like this one had been made; but actually, they never found evidence.
(* A H K)
(A K P)
Map: Spokesman of Ansarullah warns the #USA - #Saudi aggression forces from raiding the only remaining port of #Hodeida, which supplies most of #Yemen-is with imported food & medicin. Coalition speaker's remark that "we have an info" while speaking about the port shows that there is an evil intention to attack it, cutting the last vein of at least 18 million Yemenis! This comes after a week of coalition escalation on #WestCoast and heavy losses it incurred
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=185617912377432
(* A K pS)
Yemeni Joint Resistance Forces take control of May 22 Hospital in Hodeidah, amid major collapses in Houthi militia ranks
The Yemeni Joint Resistance forces on Friday took full control of the May 22 Hospital, in Western suburbs of Hodeidah in Yemen, amid a major collapses in Houthi militia's defences.
The Yemeni Resistance forces managed to kill and capture dozens of Houthi fighters who lost their strategic positions within the city of Hodeidah.
The Yemeni Joint Resistance forces took full control of new strategic areas in the Western parts of Hodeidah, in addition to the Yemen Mobile roundabout, the Red Sea silos and mills and the Faculty of Engineering, while continuing their advance towards As-Saleh city, in the Eastern part of Hodeidah.
Meanwhile, the Resistance engineering teams seized and dismantled Iranian made mines and booby traps the Houthi militia elements were planning to use in a desperate attempt o slow the advancing resistance forces.
http://wam.ae/en/details/1395302719307
(* A K pH)
30 Saudi-led airstrikes hit Hodeida
The US-backed Saudi-led aggression coalition’s fighter jets waged on Friday 30 strikes on several areas in Hodeidah province, a security official told SABA.
The raids hit areas near 22 May hospital, al-Khamseen street and other surrounding areas , the official added.
Meanwhile, Saudi-led coalition’s mercenaries targeted "Yamani factory" by several airstrikes and artillery shells in al-Hali district.
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news514065.htm
(* A K pH)
US-Saudi Aggression’s Daily Update for Friday, November 9th, 2018
In Hodiedah, a civilian was killed and three others were injured by targeting residential areas by five US-Saudi airstrikes in Attohayta. A child was killed and 9 others were injured, including a child, in the city. Over 30 raids were launched nearby May 22nd, hospital and a raid northern Hodiedah port. The US-Saudi aggression targeted Yamany Factory with a number of raids and artillery shells, damaging the factory.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3686&cat_id=1
(A K pH)
4 civilians injured in coalition’s mercenaries attacks in western coast
Four civilians, including a woman, were injured when the US-backed Saudi-led coalition’s militiamen launched a wide-scale attacks in Hodeidah province, a security official told Saba.
The offensive targeted 7 July area, destroying civilians’ properties
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news514049.htm
(A K pH)
Child killed in Saudi-led coalition’s mercenaries' offensive in Hodeida
A child was killed and nine civilians, including a child, were injured on Friday when the US-backed Saudi-led coalition launched offensives in Hodeida province, a security official told Saba.
The mercenaries offensives targeted 7 July area
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news514056.htm
(* A K)
Yemen govt announces new push to seize key port, UN warns of "dire" conditions
Yemeni forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition launched on Friday a “vast offensive” to take full control of the port city of Hodeidah, the internationally recognised government based in the southern city of Aden said.
The announcement came as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned that many people remained trapped in the city by the fighting. It also said nearly half a million people have fled the area since June.
“A military operation has begun and the national army forces have advanced towards the north and the western sides of the city of Hodeidah, progressing on all fronts with the support of the Arab coalition,” the government said in a statement.
“Fierce battles are taking place at these moments.”
Hours after Friday’s announcement of a new offensive, residents said the progress of coalition forces appeared limited. They said the Houthis had withdrawn from a hospital in the eastern suburbs of Hodeidah where fighting has been concentrated in recent days but they remained in the area.
The Houthis raided the May 22 hospital earlier this week, posting gunmen on its rooftop, according to rights groups who voiced alarm for the fate of the medical staff and patients.
(* A H K)
UN High Commissioner for Refugees: UNHCR extremely concerned about escalation of conflict in Yemen’s Hudaydah
This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is extremely concerned about the recent intensification of conflict in Yemen’s Al Hudaydah governorate and its impact on the civilian population as well as on humanitarian aid operations.
Conflict has escalated significantly around Hudaydah City and eastern and southern areas of the Governorate. Fierce clashes, air strikes and shelling inflicted scores of civilian casualties. In October alone, 94 civilians were killed and 95 injured in Al Hudaydah governorate. There is also damage to civilian infrastructure including health facilities and houses.
As testament to how dire the situation is, some 445,000 people from Al Hudaydah Governorate have been forced to flee since June, according to UN data.
While the number of those remaining in Hudaydah City is difficult to gauge, UNHCR is worried that people needing to flee for safety are unable to do so, trapped by military operations, which are increasingly confining populations and cutting off exit routes.
The fighting has also resulted in the closure of ‘Kilo 16’, the main road inland towards the capital, Sana’a, choking the lifeline for aid operations and commercial markets for the governorate and its surrounding regions.
UNHCR is also especially concerned that fighting is blocking access to our humanitarian supplies in Hudaydah. A UNHCR warehouse stocked with emergency shelter and essential aid items for conflict affected and displaced Yemenis has been cut off by an active front line, even as the need for these items grows.
UNHCR is urgently appealing to parties to the conflict to protect civilians and humanitarian personnel; and to secure humanitarian relief items stored in Al Hudaydah.
UNHCR exhorts all parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need and ensure the protection of humanitarian infrastructure in accordance with international humanitarian law.
UNHCR reiterates its appeal for an urgent cessation of hostilities in Yemen.
http://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2018/11/5be56d2b4/unhcr-extremely-concerned-escalation-conflict-yemens-hudaydah.html = https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/unhcr-extremely-concerned-about-escalation-conflict-yemen-s-hudaydah
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Clashes in Hodeidah and Bukhaiti appeal to fleeing fighters to return to the front
Clashes in the coastal city of Hodeidah (western Yemen) have escalated in the past hours between government forces backed by the Arab coalition and Houthi militia.
Al-Masdar online correspondent said the clashes continued since the morning hours on several fronts in the city, where the fighting continued at the eastern entrance and behind the city Max Market and the perimeter of the camp (AL Qetal) which the quarter of the Fifth military zone.
Confrontations continue on the 50th street, which stretches from the east to the north of the city towards the city of al-Saleh, and clashes continue southwest of the airport around Hodeidah University.
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160802
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One hospital in Hajjah receives more than 150 bodies of Houthi fighters
Local and medical sources in the northwestern province of Hajjah said that over the past three days, the province's main hospital had received more than 150 bodies of Houthi fighters who had died on the fronts.
The correspondent for Al-Masdar online said that the refrigerator of the Republican hospital in the city of Hajjah was unable to absorb all the bodies transferred to it, forcing the perpetrators to put some of the bodies in ordinary refrigerators in the hospital Yard. "Many of the bodies that the hospital receives are deported a few hours after they arrive at the hospital to be buried, the capacity of the hospital's refrigerator cannot absorb all these numbers," he said.
The bodies were brought from the two fronts of Hajjah and Hodeidah, where clashes between Houthi militias, government forces, and coalition forces have recently escalated, the sources said.
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160797
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Norwegian Refugee Council: On-the-record update on the situation in Hodeidah, Yemen, 9 November 2018
Quote from Mohamed Abdi, NRC's country director in Yemen:
"Hodeidah is at risk of being obliterated. We warned the international community that an offensive on the city was coming, and it has. We warned that the violence would see another half a million people flee their homes, and it did.
We are now warning that by allowing this to go on, parties to the conflict and their international backers will be responsible for the death, injury and suffering of millions of people."
"The humanitarian cost of this war is almost $3 billion this year alone but the cost to humanity completely inestimable. Senseless attacks on civilians, evidence of a starving population and desperate pleas from humanitarian witnesses have done little more than elicit condolences from an international community that could have stepped on the brakes long ago. The lack of action from the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, is utterly unconscionable."
Latest updates:
- Eight days into a renewed offensive on Hodeidah city, civilians are reporting relentless airstrikes, low-flying jets and Apache helicopters, mortars and missiles on the outskirts of the town and within 5km of the nation's main port.
- At least 18 civilians were killed and another 17 injured by airstrikes, artillery shelling and landmines in Hodeidah and Hajjah governorates on Wednesday this week alone, following several days of massive strikes and shelling on farms, factories, trucks, houses and markets across the governorates.
- Reports from earlier in the week that Ansarallah fighters have taken up position on the rooftop of a hospital on Hodeidah city's outskirts were followed today by reports of three airstrikes on the facility, damaging hospital buildings and prompting its evacuation, placing patients at critical risk.
- As of the last week of October, the International Organisation for Migration had recorded more than 545,000 people have fled their homes since 1 June this year, equating to almost 3,700 each day. Of this population, 83% come from Hodeidah governorate and a further 14% from Hajjah to the north of Hodeidah.
- There is now only one viable overland route from Hodeidah city to Sana'a, and a very high risk that further aerial or land attacks on roads or bridges could sever access roads between the cities entirely, cutting the last remaining supply route for food, fuel and medicine to many of the estimated 20 million Yemenis who depend on imports through Hodeidah to meet their basic needs.
- Five main roads in Hodeidah governorate have now been closed or cut off by fighting, and a further two highly restricted.
- Humanitarian organisations continue to experience obstructions to the delivery of critical aid to people in dire need across Hodeidah, Hajjah and other severely-affected governorates, including cholera-prevention activities.
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/record-update-situation-hodeidah-yemen-9-november-2018
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World Health Organization: Statement on Yemen by Dr Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean
The current violence in Al Hudaydah is placing tens of thousands of already vulnerable people at risk, and preventing WHO from reaching them with the help they urgently need. The violence, now in close proximity to the area hospitals, is affecting the movement and safety of health staff, patients and ambulances, as well as the functionality of health facilities, leaving hundreds without access to treatment.
With only 50% of health facilities functioning across the country and no doctors in 18% of districts in Yemen, we cannot afford for one more health worker to lose their life, or one more hospital to go out of service. In Hudaydah city, the hospitals are closest to the frontlines, which is alarming and is jeopardizing the lives of health care workers and patients alike.
Increased fighting is also affecting the port of Al Hudaydah, through which 85% of the country’s food supplies are normally imported. The people of Yemen are already on the brink of famine, with 1.8 million children under five and 1.1 million pregnant or breastfeeding women acutely malnourished. More than 400,000 severely acutely malnourished children rely on urgent and accessible medical care to stay alive.
As the immune systems of millions of Yemenis fail due to hunger, thousands are dying of malnutrition, cholera and other diseases. People living in Al Hudaydah are some of the worst hit, with the highest rates of cholera reported since the beginning of the outbreak.
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According to Al Jazeera's tweets on Twitter:
INTELLIGENCE Online Site:
◾Officials of the Pentagon were involved in planning the new Saudi-Emirati attack on#Hodeidah.
◾The Pentagon provided Saudi Arabia and the UAE a vital information to launch the new attack on Hodeidah.
◾Washington gave Riyadh two more surveillance planes before the attack on Hodeidah.
◾Pentagon officials also met in Riyadh with Saudi and Emirati officers to plan the attack.
https://www.facebook.com/LivingInYemenOnTheEdge/photos/a.963391330380564/1999796700073350
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New War Crime, US-Saudi Aggression Targets Hospitals in Hodiedah
US-Saudi Forces targeted The 22-May Hospital by three airstrikes and 12 artillery shells, damaging the hospital. No further information about the extent of the damage has been reported, yet.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3663&cat_id=1
https://www.facebook.com/LivingInYemenOnTheEdge/photos/a.963391330380564/1999721406747546
Remark: Houthi snipers had installed themselves on the rooftop.
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Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis trapped in war-torn port city
“Hodeida is once again trapped in violence with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis caught in the middle,” Fabrizio Carboni, a senior official with the International Committee of the Red Cross, said on Thursday.
Residents said they remained confined inside their houses as battles raged outside. Houthi rebels have dug in, patrolling the streets in machine-gun-mounted pickups and deploying fighters in buildings, houses, even hospitals, prompting fears that they are using civilians as human shields.
The coalition, meanwhile, has conducted scores of airstrikes and deployed helicopters to target areas in and around Hodeida, including residential neighbourhoods.
“We have been receiving a lot of civilian casualties,” said Mareb Almahweeti, a surgeon at a military hospital in the city, adding that many of the injured were struck by shrapnel from airstrikes.
“The Apache helicopters are bombing many areas around the city most of the day. We also hear airstrikes most of the day. The bombing is closer than before.”
“The upcoming talks cannot be an excuse to disregard the laws of war that protect the lives of the Yemeni people,” Carboni said. “Wars have rules, and parties to the conflict must respect them, even in the fiercest battles.”
“This new attack on Hodeida is brushing away the hope sparked by the recent announcement of the peace talks.”
Inside Hodeida, anxiety is growing. The clashes have largely unfolded in the southern and eastern parts of the densely populated city, residents said. In the affected areas, shops are either closed early or shuttered altogether. Movement is limited.
“There is a sense of fear among people from being hit by mortars or airstrikes,” said Mazen Mujammal, a 21-year-old resident.
In the first six days of the new offensive, Doctors Without Borders treated 24 civilians for war injuries in Hodeida and 50 in the town of Mokha, the medical charity said. The aid agency Save the Children said that more than 150 people had been killed in recent days.
Soon, aid workers worry, there could be fewer places to assist the population. The fighting is increasingly edging toward hospitals and health centres. On Wednesday, Save the Children reported that clashes damaged a pharmacy at one of its health facilities, adding that shelling also hit residential areas.
More than half of Hodeida's 600,000 residents have fled the city, mostly in the summer before the initial offensive. But many of those who remain are finding it difficult to leave.
According to Save the Children, temporary roadblocks erected by the warring parties were “preventing people from leaving or entering the city overnight, in effect trapping them in an active conflict zone”. Clashes on shifting front lines also have blocked escape routes to the south of the city, while the rebels have planted mines along other paths out of the city, Amnesty said.
That leaves only one northern road out. But with fuel prices rising, and the Yemeni currency collapsing because of the war, many residents don't have the means to escape. Among them are those who returned last month during a lull in the fighting, residents said.
“Those who have come back cannot afford to leave again because they have exhausted their financial reserves,” said Nabil Almahdi, 44, a resident.
The civilians in Hodeida are “completely powerless and can only stay put to await their fate”, Hadid said. “Their lives are in the hands of warring parties who have shown little or no regard for their duty to protect civilians.”
“Cholera remains probably the biggest threat to people in Hodeida,” Grande said. “The humanitarian programs that are operational there are making the difference in keeping them alive.” – By Ali Al Mujahed and Sudarsan Raghavan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/hundreds-of-thousands-of-yemenis-trapped-as-fighting-escalates-in-strategic-port-city/2018/11/08/f98accb4-e296-11e8-ba30-a7ded04d8fac_story.html = https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-thousands-of-yemenis-trapped-in-war-torn-port-city-20181109-p50ezt.html
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Yemen: Prospects of peace do not excuse violations in Hodeida battle
As Hodeida sees a dramatic escalation in the fighting around the city, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls on warring parties to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure from unnecessary harm, especially in the lead-up to potential talks between parties.
ICRC teams on the ground have seen how fear is rising among Yemeni people of being accidentally hit or purposely targeted. Fighting is nearing health centers, which led to the interruption of services in Hodeida’s 22nd May Hospital. The city’s biggest hospital, Al-Thawra, is mere meters from the frontline, and if more health structures are rendered dysfunctional, the remaining facilities might not have the capacity to provide regular services or cope with an influx of casualties.
The ICRC encourages political efforts to put an end to a war that has caused intense misery for Yemeni families. Millions of people are displaced in the country and millions are battling extreme hunger as a direct consequence of the conflict.
“This new attack on Hodeida is brushing away the hope sparked by the recent announcement of the peace talks,” said Carboni. “We´re running out of words to describe how wretched the situation is. It´s time to see a glimmer of hope in Yemen.”
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/yemen-prospects-peace-do-not-excuse-violations-hodeida-battle
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With 14 million people at risk of famine in Yemen, IRC calls for immediate ceasefire around port city of Hodeidah
Frank McManus, International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Country Director in Yemen, said: “Calls for a cessation of hostilities have not changed the reality on the ground. In fact, the situation is deteriorating. In the short time since Secretary Pompeo called for a ceasefire, we have seen over a hundred airstrikes hitting Hodeidah and Coalition-supported ground forces fighting their way into the city. Ordinary Yemenis are suffering and dying as the parties to the conflict try to strengthen their positions. But the truth is, increased fighting only pushes sustainable peace further away. And the silence from their international backers is deafening."
A year ago this week the Coalition began its blockade of Yemen’s Red Sea ports. The impact on Yemen’s economy and population was disastrous and set Yemen on the road to the humanitarian crisis we see today.
Yemen’s resilience has been broken. Now, 14 million people could be at risk of starvation - half of all Yemenis. Hodeidah port remains the country’s lifeline — the only entry point able to manage the food needed to avert the preventable deaths of millions of Yemenis. Any damage to Hodeidah port, or delays in the distribution of food due to fighting, will be catastrophic.
With the situation in Yemen growing more desperate by the day there is no excuse for inertia. The international community has warned the Coalition of the risks of attacking Hodeidah on numerous occasions. Now it must find its voice again to condemn this assault and turn words of support for a cessation of hostilities into meaningful diplomatic pressure.
An immediate nationwide cessation of hostilities must be codified in a new UN Security Council resolution to halt the fighting and allow the humanitarian response to take hold. In addition, all seaports and Sana’a airport should be opened and fully operational for humanitarian and commercial traffic. Vital civil servant salary payments must resume.
Significant diplomatic pressure will be needed if these agreements are to be honoured. If necessary, the US and UK should end diplomatic and military support to the Saudi and Emirati-led Coalition. Otherwise, these nations must be ready to accept their responsibility for the suffering and death of millions of Yemeni men, women, and children.
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'The violence is unbearable': medics in Yemen plead for help
Hodeidah hospitals struggle to treat people hurt in airstrikes as well as hungry children
Aid agencies and medical staff on the ground in Hodeidah have begged the international community to intervene to stop the violence in the besieged Yemeni city as coalition and Houthi rebel forces struggle to gain the upper hand ahead of a planned ceasefire at the end of the month.
“The violence is unbearable, I cannot tell you. We’re surrounded by strikes from the air, sea and land,” said Wafa Abdullah Saleh, a nurse at the barely functioning al-Olafi hospital in the Houthi-controlled city centre.
“The hospital treats the hungry and people injured in airstrikes day in and day out, but there is a serious shortage of medicine,” she said. “Even if we try our hardest we cannot treat patients because we lack the necessities for basic operations.”
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6 family members killed in Saudi-led airstrikes on Hodeida
Six family members were killed on Thursday when the US-backed Saudi-led coalition's warplanes launched strikes on Yemen’s Red Sea Port City of Hodeida, an official told Saba.
A father and five of his children were killed when the airstrikes hit their home in Jabaliah area of Tuhayta district
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news513993.htm
and
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US-KSA Airstrike Killed A Father , His Five Children In Yemen’s Hodeida
At least six civilians have been killed when Saudi military aircraft carried out airstrikes against a residential area in Yemen’s strategic western province of Hudaydah as the Riyadh regime presses ahead with its atrocious bombardment campaign against its southern neighbor.
Local source said , Saudi fighter jets conducted aerial assaults against al-Jabaliyah area in al-Tuhayat district on Thursday afternoon, the airstrikes claimed the lives of a father and his five children.
Earlier , two air strikes were launched on Hardh district by the US-KSA coalition drones. Seven civilians including children killed and women and two women injured. (photos)
http://www.newnewss.net/us-ksa-airstrike-killed-a-father-with-his-five-children-in-yemens-hodeida/
more photos: https://twitter.com/narrabyee/status/1060746680285491202
film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiSfAL2hg78 = https://www.facebook.com/SaudiArabia.war.crimes.against.Yemen/videos/1800949536701017/
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Yemen rebels battle to slow loyalist advance in key port city
Yemeni rebels battled Friday to slow an advance by pro-government forces deeper into Hodeida seeking to recapture the city's lifeline port, launching fierce barrages of mortar fire and aiming to cut off supply routes, military sources said.
The Shiite Huthi rebels, whose chief has vowed his troops would never surrender despite being vastly outnumbered, shelled government positions in the south of the Red Sea city, loyalist officials said.
But despite the "intense attacks", loyalist forces made fresh advances in eastern sectors of Hodeida.
The rebels, for their part, said their fighters had cut off government supply routes in four sectors of Hodeida province.
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Yemen troops advance deeper into rebel-held Hodeida
Yemeni pro-government forces backed by Saudi-led coalition warplanes advanced inside rebel-held Hodeida Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians bracing for fighting in the streets of the Red Sea port city.
After a week of intense battles with the Iran-backed Huthi insurgents on the outskirts of Hodeida, loyalist troops reached residential neighbourhoods, using bulldozers to remove concrete road blocks installed by the rebels.
Flashing victory signs, troops of the United Arab Emirates-trained Giants Brigade armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades rolled down the city's streets in pickup trucks bearing their brigade logo spray-painted in red, a journalist working for AFP reported.
Three military sources said that government forces and their coalition allies were edging towards the city's vital docks through which nearly 80 percent of Yemen's commercial imports and practically all UN-supervised humanitarian aid pass.
Columns headed for the port advanced two kilometres (more than a mile) along the main road from the interior to the east and three kilometres (nearly two miles) along the coast road from the south, the sources said.
"Either the rebels surrender the city peacefully or we take it by force, but we will take it either way," commander Moammar al-Saidy told AFP.
Coalition warplanes bombed rebel positions as the ground forces advanced.
At least 47 Huthi fighters were killed, hospital sources in rebel-held areas told AFP.
Medics at hospitals in government-held territory said 11 soldiers were killed.
The deaths bring the overall toll from seven days of fighting to 250 combatants killed -- 197 rebels and 53 loyalists.
Aid group Save the Children has confirmed the death of one civilian, a 15-year-old boy who died of shrapnel wounds sustained just outside the city (with city map showing the advance)
https://www.afp.com/en/news/3954/yemen-troops-advance-deeper-rebel-held-hodeida-doc-1ao27f2 = https://www.france24.com/en/20181108-yemen-troops-rebel-held-port-city-hodeida-humanitarian-crisis-malnutrition-saudi-iran (* A K)
Fighting nears hospital in Yemen's Hodeidah, trapping young patients
Houthi fighters battled Saudi-led forces in Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah on Thursday and posted gunmen on the roof of a hospital, leaving doctors and young patients in the line of fire, rights groups and military sources said.
The Houthis raided the May 22 hospital in the city’s eastern suburbs, sources said, as clashes raged on in the face of mounting calls from world powers, including some of Saudi Arabia’s main Western allies, for a ceasefire.
“This is a stomach-churning development that could have devastating consequences for the hospital’s medical workers and dozens of civilian patients, including many children,” said Amnesty’s International’s Middle East Director of Campaigns, Samah Hadid.
Fighting was getting closer to the hospital and had already disrupted services there, the International Committee of the Red Cross added.
Houthi officials did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
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Yemeni Arms Enters Hodeidah from Different Fronts
Yemeni forces have advanced inside the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah after tightening the noose on Iran-backed Houthi insurgents from almost all fronts.
Military sources said Thursday that the army has avoided urban warfare in order not to cause civilian casualties.
Medical sources also said that at least 100 Houthis have been killed in the fighting and in Saudi-led Arab Coalition airstrikes.
The Yemeni army’s official website said the military liberated on Thursday new sites in Hodeidah amid intense fighting.
It quoted Giants Brigade official Ahmed al-Juhaili as saying that that Yemeni forces have taken control of the passports building after heavy clashes with the insurgents.
He said Houthi fighters have escaped towards the city center and have hidden among civilians after storming their houses and placing snipers on rooftops.
https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1455666/yemeni-arms-enters-hodeidah-different-fronts
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UAE-backed Yemeni operation making progress in Al-Hudaydah
The renewed operation around Al-Hudaydah appears to be a major offensive to capture the Yemeni port city, rather than another incremental step to take new positions on its outskirts. (subscribers only)
https://www.janes.com/article/84439/uae-backed-yemeni-operation-making-progress-in-al-hudaydah
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First person: Bringing aid to my neighbours in Hodeidah just got harder
For the last few nights, gunfire has woken me up around midnight and raged on until dawn. Being from Yemen, where war has gone on for 44 months, and living in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, where an offensive has been heading for more weeks than I care to remember, you’d think I’d be used to it. But lately the fighting is edging closer to the city centre, and I can hear it. Few people sleep through the night, and I can see the exhaustion and anxiety on my neighbours’ faces.
I’ve been an aid worker in Hodeidah for more than two years, and in that time the city has changed so much it’s almost unrecognisable. When I first moved here from Hadhramaut province, which is east of Hodeidah, the city felt alive, despite the war. The shops, restaurants, and markets were full. The oppressive summer heat meant that families filled the streets late into the evening.
I even brought my four children with me, and we set about making a home. It was just the five of us, because my wife died shortly before we moved – she had an autoimmune liver disease and the treatment she needed wasn’t available in Yemen. I think the stress of the war made her condition worse.
Now Hodeidah feels half empty, and since the airstrikes, shelling, and shooting is getting worse at night (or at least it feels that way), as evening approaches the city really clears out. By 6pm, there are a few people on the streets. By 7, you can’t see a soul. Everyone is hiding in their homes, and lately many people don’t leave at all.
It’s even emptier for me. When, at the start of this year, it became clear that Hodeidah would be the next front line of this war, I sent my kids to stay with their grandmother in Sana’a. My wife’s death made it an even harder decision, and I worry about them wherever they are. But my youngest is just five years old and at least doesn’t hear the same bullets I do.
I was lucky to get my kids out. Far too many families never had the luxury of leaving, and even some of those who left have come back, either because they ran out of money or found the conditions in makeshift camps so miserable that they would rather live near the front lines.
The UN says Yemen is on the brink of famine, and I’ve seen what that looks like first-hand. As people grow increasingly desperate, my job has become harder, but it also feels more urgent.
[…]
The days are long, the dangers many, and the obstacles to aid workers’ jobs in Hodeidah never seem to end. There is endless negotiating with the UN, local partners, communities, and authorities on various sides of the war. People are relying on us to deliver aid effectively and on time.
Now that the battle for the city I call home is getting closer, at night, when I hear the gunfire again and can’t sleep, I also worry about how I can keep my staff and the people we help safe. I obsess over every detail, but this war has been merciless and unpredictable, and the truth is that no amount of planning can fully guard against the often indiscriminate violence.
I know families are struggling to get by on the help we provide; they tell me our food packs sometimes don’t last more than two weeks anymore because they are sharing rations with neighbours and loved-ones. Their sallow skin and sunken eyes – both signs of malnutrition – are clear indications that the people of Hodeidah and Yemen can’t take much more.
They ask us to bring more food. But no matter what we do, aid organisations are not designed or equipped to feed an entire nation. Without an end to this war, many more innocent people will die – be it from hunger, like the people I help; from disease, like my wife; or from the bombs and bullets that are edging ever closer to me – by Salem Jaffer Baobaid
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International Committee of the Red Cross: Yemen: Prospects of peace do not excuse violations in Hodeida battle
As Hodeida sees a dramatic escalation in the fighting around the city, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls on warring parties to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure from unnecessary harm, especially in the lead-up to potential talks between parties.
“Hodeida is once again trapped in violence with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis caught in the middle. The upcoming talks cannot be an excuse to disregard the laws of war that protect the lives of the Yemeni people,” said Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East. "Wars have rules and parties to the conflict must respect them, even in the fiercest battles.”
ICRC teams on the ground have seen how fear is rising among Yemeni people of being accidentally hit or purposely targeted. Fighting is nearing health centers, which led to the interruption of services in Hodeida’s 22nd May Hospital. The city’s biggest hospital, Al-Thawra, is mere meters from the frontline, and if more health structures are rendered dysfunctional, the remaining facilities might not have the capacity to provide regular services or cope with an influx of casualties.
The ICRC encourages political efforts to put an end to a war that has caused intense misery for Yemeni families. Millions of people are displaced in the country and millions are battling extreme hunger as a direct consequence of the conflict.
“This new attack on Hodeida is brushing away the hope sparked by the recent announcement of the peace talks,” said Carboni. “We´re running out of words to describe how wretched the situation is. It´s time to see a glimmer of hope in Yemen.”
The ICRC in Hodeida is providing support to Al-Thawra hospital and the Hodeida Water Authority to help keep basic services running. Since the escalation of the fighting in June the ICRC has delivered more than 80 metric tons of medical supplies to health facilities in and around the city and food and household items to more than 48,000 internally displaced individuals.
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-prospects-peace-do-not-excuse-violations-hodeida-battle
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3 Children Injured by Saudi-Mercenaries Bombing on Residential Areas in Hodeidah
Three children were wounded, on Thursday, by the US-Saudi mercenaries artillery shelling in Attohayta district of Hodeidah province.
Al-Masirah Net correspondent in Hodeidah reported that, the Saudi-mercenaries targeted the wounded children's home with an artillery shell in Al-Jabalia area of Attohayta district.
On Wednesday evening, a civilian was killed and 10 others were wounded by heavy artillery shelling on different areas in Al-Haly district of Hodeidah.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3660&cat_id=1
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Folks inside Hodeidah city: "we can't leave even if had to - we don't have money for food let alone flee and relocate, but also to make a dash for it we get caught in crossfire, landmines, airstrikes.." Imagine being in position with kids, women and elderly. Hell on earth.
https://twitter.com/omeisy/status/1060485920099577856
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Map: The ongoing #UAE-backed offensive on al #Hudaydah, western #Yemen is likely designed to surround the city and add pressure on the al #Houthi movement ahead of talks later this month, unlikely they will make a move on the port or entire city at this time.
https://twitter.com/MaherFarrukh/status/1060243820934299648
and Hodeidah from the air: https://twitter.com/amnesty/status/1060252468628635648
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Film: Crimes of aggression in the province of Hodeidah 07-11-2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAhgzXVryDo
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"Yamani" factory was damaged in Hodeidah and the battles raging south of the city
staff at the Thabet Brothers factory in the southern city of Hodeidah (west of the country) said that the factory was badly hit by the shelling of Arab coalition fighters led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the loss of Houthi shells over the past two days
According to Al-Masdar online reporter, more than 6,000 workers and employees lost their only source of livelihood.
He said the fighting between the government forces and the Houthi militants intensified towards Hodeidah University, temporarily stalled at the eastern entrance of the city and east of the 50th Street, with the Houthis continuing to launch missiles as the flight intensified.
The battles led to the martyrdom of a woman in the Kamran tour and the wounding of many citizens by the shooting of clashes in several neighborhoods of Hodeidah city.
According to our correspondent, the Houthi militants have been holding dozens of Somalis, including women, in the Laylat al-Omar Hall at the intersection of Al-Hakimi and Musa streets.
He added that four of them tried to flee and were returned from Sanaa Street, after which the escorts were tightened until Wednesday afternoon, as fighting intensified, the Houthis took them out on board three “Haice” buses and “Hylux”, and drove them through Sanaa Street to enter Zayed Road towards the neighborhood of July 7, where the battles are raging.
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160764
My comment: This is by a pro-Hadi government source. Coalition claims that the Houthis had shelled the factory are baseless, as this report shows. – Yes, this is the devastating effect of the coalition’s assault against Hodeidah – predicted and unpreventable.
(* A K)
58 combatants killed in fighting for Yemen's Hodeida: medics
Dozens of combatants were killed as pro-government forces closed in on rebel forces in the heart of the Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Thursday, hospital sources said.
Medics at hospitals inside the city reported 47 rebels had been killed in overnight ground fighting and air raids by a Saudi-led coalition supporting the government.
Sources at hospitals in government-held areas on the outskirts said 11 soldiers had also been killed.
Over the past week, Yemeni government forces backed by coalition troops have slowly edged into the city of some 600,000 people, one of the last rebel strongholds on the Red Sea coast.
An army source in Hodeida said rebel trenches and landmines had slowed their advance into the city on Thursday.
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Yemen's pro-government forces recapture Red Sea mill from Houthis
The mill is estimated to have 45,000 metric tonnes of food inside
Yemen's pro-government forces backed by the Arab coalition recaptured the Red Sea mill and other factories on Tuesday as the Al Amalikah brigades advanced closer to rebel-held Hodeidah.
The retaking of the mill, east of Hodeidah, from Houthi fighters marks a significant victory for the Yemeni military as it means taking control of one of the rebel group's food supplies.
One Hodeidah resident told The National that Houthi fighters had shelled factories on Wednesday killing four workers and injuring more than eight. .
In September UN humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande said in a statement that the Red Sea mill had 45,000 metric tonnes of food inside. "Enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month," she said. "If the mills are damaged or disrupted, the human cost will be incalculable."
The spokesman for the Al Amalikah brigades Colonel Mamoon Al Mahjami told The National that pro-Yemeni forces had been advancing steadily toward Hodeidah in a bid to create a noose around the city of 600,000 and force rebel fighters to surrender.
"The ultimate goal is to impose a strict siege around the Houthi fighters who are still stationed amid the populated neighbourhoods in the city center," he said.
and also https://www.spa.gov.sa/viewfullstory.php?lang=en&newsid=1838880
My comment: Houthi sources reported that the Red Sea Mills had been destroyed by Saudi coalition air raids, look below.
(* A K)
Yemen war: Battle for vital port of Hudaydah intensifies
The battle for the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah has intensified, as government forces backed by Saudi-led coalition air strikes advance on rebel positions.
More than 150 people are reported to have been killed since troops and militiamen stepped up a ground assault on the city's outskirts last Thursday.
Two hundred air strikes were reported in and around Hudaydah on Saturday alone, and aid workers say there have been intense clashes around the airport, to the east of the city, and near a university to the west (with city map showing hospitals)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46125858
(** A K)
US-backed troops take Yemen port area with ground assault, airstrikes
Troops from a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthi rebel positions in Yemen’s Hodeida with airstrikes and a ground assault on Wednesday and now control a major road leading into the city, military officials and witnesses on both sides of the front line said.
An Emirati-trained force known as the Giants, backed by Apache attack helicopters, secured an urban area along 50th Street, which leads to the city’s key Red Sea port facilities some 5 kilometers (3 miles) away, they added.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals or lack of authorization to brief journalists, they said that the Iran-backed Shiite rebels had been firing mainly from elevated and rooftop sniper positions, and have now resorted to burning tires to obscure the gunships' view. Most civilians have fled the area, they said.
Dozens of fighters have been killed and hundreds wounded from both sides since a renewed coalition offensive on the city began five days ago, following calls by the Trump administration for a cease-fire by late November.
The fighting has left dead bodies lying on the ground and inside burnt-out vehicles at the city's edge, according to witnesses. They said several civilians have been killed by shelling in residential areas.
"We are watching before our eyes an unprecedented human tragedy," Food and Agriculture Organization chief Jose Graziano da Silva told a high-level briefing on food insecurity at the U.N. in New York.
"Yemen is living proof of an apocalyptical equation: conflicts and food security go hand in hand, and when there is an overlap of climate change and conflict, famine is already on the horizon," he said.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/troops-saudi-led-coalition-yemen-port-neighborhood-59028459 = https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/11/07/us-backed-troops-take-yemen-port-area-with-ground-assault-airstrikes
(** A B H K)
Amnesty International: HUTHI GUNMEN RAID HOSPITAL AS HODEIDAH’S CIVILIANS FACE IMMINENT ONSLAUGHT IN YEMEN
Civilians in Yemen’s western port city of Hodeidah will pay a terrible price amid the battle engulfing their city unless warring parties act immediately to protect them from the fighting, Amnesty International warned today.
In an extremely worrying development, Huthi fighters arrived at a hospital in Hodeidah and recently took up positions atop a hospital roof, placing numerous civilians inside the building in grave danger.
“This is a stomach-churning development that could have devastating consequences for the hospital’s medical workers and dozens of civilian patients, including many children, being treated there,” said Samah Hadid, Amnesty International’s Middle East Director of Campaigns.
“The presence of Huthi fighters on the hospital’s roof violates international humanitarian law, but this violation does not make the hospital and the patients and medical staff lawful targets for Saudi Arabia and UAE-led Coalition air strikes. The hospital is full of injured civilians who have nowhere else to go for lifesaving medical care. Anyone attacking a hospital under these conditions risks responsibility for war crimes.”
This deliberate militarization of hospitals comes in the context of a war in which the Saudi Arabia and UAE-led Coalition’s relentless and devastating use of air strikes in civilian areas.
Local contacts in Hodeidah told Amnesty International that groups of armed Huthi fighters travelling in Toyota pick-up trucks arrived at the hospital in the city’s 22 May district on Friday November 2. They commandeered a section of the hospital before placing a team of fighters on the roof. Hospital staff confirmed that armed fighters have been coming and going ever since.
The hospital is close to Street 50 in the eastern part of Hodeidah. There has been fierce fighting in the area since the weekend, endangering the hospital and all those inside.
“The laws of war demand that hospitals are not used for military purposes. Placing gunmen on a hospital roof blurs lines which should never be blurred. Hospitals are not a target: the sick and injured have an absolute right to safe medical treatment at all times, and medical workers must be allowed to carry out their lifesaving work,” said Samah Hadid.
Amnesty International has documented a series of air strikes carried out by the Saudi Arabia and UAE-led Coalition in the lead-up to the recent escalation in fighting.
The organization interviewed six witnesses and survivors after a Coalition air strike on October 13 hit Jabal Ras in Hodeidah governorate. The strike appeared to target a Huthi checkpoint at a time when civilians were passing in at least two buses and other vehicles. According to those eyewitnesses, the strike may have injured one of the individuals manning the checkpoint, but it also killed at least 11 civilians, with some reports placing the number as high as 17.
One witness told Amnesty International: “We were headed out en route for Umra [pilgrimage], then we were stopped at a checkpoint. He [the person manning the checkpoint] asked for our ID cards, and within a few minutes the strike happened. It landed between our bus and another one next to us. All of a sudden, we were in the middle of an explosion. There were victims everywhere, including my mother who died and one of our neighbors. Some lost their hands, others lost their legs. Everybody was injured.”
According to the witnesses, there were no military vehicles or soldiers in the vicinity at the time – just the checkpoint with a single individual, around 10 meters away from the buses. Targeting a checkpoint in such circumstances would be a disproportionate or otherwise indiscriminate attack, violating international humanitarian law.
Amnesty International has also documented other Coalition air strikes in and around Hodeidah
Huthi forces, meanwhile, have responded to the recent military advance on Hodeidah with mortar fire, which is notoriously imprecise and should never be used in populated areas. This tactic is also claiming an increasing number of civilian lives
No escape for trapped civilians
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than half of Hodeidah’s estimated 600,000 residents have managed to leave the city before it becomes engulfed in conflict, but many remain and are effectively trapped.
Ongoing fighting blocks escape routes to the south of the city, and Huthi forces have mined other routes out, leaving only the northern road free to pass. But soaring fuel prices and Yemen’s currency collapse – both of which are symptoms of the conflict – mean this potential escape route is out of reach for many people.
The Saudi Arabia and UAE-led Coalition has failed to follow through on a September 24 pledge to establish three humanitarian corridors out of Hodeidah city.
“Trapped by a cruel combination of changing frontlines, minefields and reports of air strikes targeting those who flee, Hodeidah’s civilians face a life-threatening dilemma while the battle encroaches ever closer,” said Samah Hadid.
“Civilians trapped in Hodeidah are completely powerless and can only stay put to await their fate. Their lives are in the hands of warring parties who have shown little or no regard for their duty to protect civilians.”
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YEMEN: SAVE THE CHILDREN HEALTH FACILITY COMES UNDER ATTACK IN HODEIDAH
A Save the Children supported health facility in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah came under attack this morning, damaging one of the pharmacies that supplies life-saving medicines. Shelling has also hit residential areas.
On the night of November 4, the Saudi and Emirati-led Coalition escalated their current military offensive including heavy airstrikes over the coastal city of Hodeidah.
Soldiers allied to the Government of Yemen are now waging a battle within the city area. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people, roughly half of them children, are in danger.
Artillery shelling is being used heavily by all sides. More than 150 people have been reported killed.
There were temporary road blocks preventing people from leaving or entering the city overnight, in effect trapping them in an active conflict zone.
Save the Children is deeply concerned for the wellbeing of civilians trapped inside Hodeidah and urges the warring parties to stop the fighting immediately and seek a political solution to this brutal conflict. The UN Security Council must make this a reality.
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Film: Calls for Yemen ceasefire as battle for port city intensify
Thirty-five humanitarian organisations have signed a joint call for a ceasefire in Yemen as fighting intensifies around the port of Hodeida. Yemeni militia, backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies, surround the city, which is occupied by Houthi rebels. Be warned: this report contains images that some people may find distressing.
https://www.channel4.com/news/calls-for-yemen-ceasefire-as-battle-for-port-city-intensifie
(A K pH)
Nov. 7: 11 Citizens Killed and Injured by US-Saudi Aggression Artillery Shells in Hodeidah
11 citizens were killed and injured Wednesday by aggression artillery shelling on residential areas in the city of Hodeidah.
According to the correspondent of "Al-Masirah Net," a citizen was killed and 10 others were injured as a result of intensive artillery bombardment targeted various areas of the Alhali district.
The correspondent pointed out that the forces of aggression continue to target residential neighborhoods in the city of Hodeidah by artillery and guns.
Earlier in the day, a worker of Yamani factory was killed and two others were injured as a result of the artillery shelling targeted the Yamani factory at Bajel distrect. A mother and her child were also seriously injured by artillery shelling in Tahita district.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3645&cat_id=1
and the other side claims:
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Four civilians were killed and two others injured in an artillery bombardment by Houthi fighters on a residential neighborhood in al-Tahita, south of Hodeidah (western Yemen).
A reporter for Almasdar online said that artillery shells fired by Houthi fighters and landed on the " Bni Al-Dukhun" neighborhood resulted in the death of four residents, including a child, and injured others.
The coastal city of Tahita has been shelled from Houthi militia from time to time since it was taken over by the legitimate government forces about three months ago
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160699
and
(A K pH)
Nov. 7: In Hodeidah, a worker of Yamani factory was killed and two others were injured as a result of US-Saudi mercenaries bombing of the factory in Alhali district. A citizen was killed and 10 others were injured by intensive artillery shelling on various areas of the same district.
A mother and her child were seriously injured and their house was destroyed by the mercenaries aggression targeting to their house in Tahita district.
The US-Saudi Aerial Aggression launched more than 30 raids on Kilo 16, the 50th Street and various areas of Alhali district during the past hours, and launched three raids on Hays district.
The US-Saudi invaders and the mercenaries shelled by artillery and machine guns the central prison in Hawk district and the homes of citizens in the area of July 7 and residential neighborhoods in the city of Hodeidah.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3650&cat_id=1
(A K pH)
A mother and her child were seriously injured on Wednesday by the US-Saudi mercenaries who targeted a house in Hodeidah province.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3651&cat_id=1
(A K pH)
4 citizens injured in mercenaries’artillery shelling on Hodeida
Four citizens were injured on Tuesday when Saudi-led coalition militias fired artillery in Hodeida province against residential areas and that led to wound four citizens, a security official told Saba.
The bombardment targeted citizens’ houses in area of July 7.
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news513739.htm
(* A K)
Yemen forces push towards Hodeida as death toll mounts
Yemeni pro-government forces said Wednesday they had advanced closer to the rebel-held port city of Hodeida after fierce battles that have killed nearly 200 fighters in the past week.
The clashes come as the United Nations pushes to restart negotiations between the warring parties, after planned talks in Geneva collapsed in September before they even began.
In the past 24 hours, 27 Iran-backed Huthi rebels and 12 pro-government fighters have been killed on the outskirts of Hodeida city, a medical source told AFP on Wednesday.
A pro-government military source said that loyalists backed by a Saudi-led coalition made "limited advances" towards the city and its Red Sea port, through which more than 70 percent of the impoverished country's imports pass.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6362217/Yemen-forces-push-Hodeida-death-toll-mounts.html = https://www.afp.com/en/news/3954/fears-civilians-yemen-forces-edge-closer-lifeline-port-doc-1an15k1
(** A K)
Battle rages in Yemen's vital port as ceasefire looms
Houthi rebels place snipers on hospital roof, as 100 airstrikes hit civilian areas of Hodeidah
Instead of bringing calm to the besieged Yemeni city, calls for a ceasefire in Hodeidah have brought some of the worst violence the vital port has yet faced in the three-year war.
Baseem al-Janani, who lives in the city, said: “The clashes are absolutely crazy right now. I have a headache from the shelling and bombing in the east. People are trapped in their houses for hours at a time because of shrapnel and gunfire. But their houses are not safe either.”
Pro-government militias are trying to seize as much ground as possible before fighting is supposed to stop at the end of November, when it is hoped UN-sponsored peace talks will restart in Sweden.
The Houthis, too, have stepped up operations, laying an estimated 1m landmines in anticipation of the coalition attack, codenamed Operation Golden Victory. On Tuesday, fighters raided the city’s May 22 hospital – named for Yemen’s national day – and set up sniper positions on the building’s roof, Janani said.
“We don’t have enough hospitals anyway. The patients and staff are now terrified they will be an airstrike target,” he said.
In the event of a full-scale attack, the rebels are expected to withdraw to the highlands surrounding the city, but have promised to deliver “hell on hell” to the coalition first.
Hisham al-Omeisy, a Yemen analyst, said: “We always thought Hodeidah was a red line. The international community was always opposed to an operation there. But the coalition is showing it is willing to cross it, and that must scare the Houthis.”
A Yemeni aid worker, who asked not to be named, said: “It seems there is a new push to end the war now from the coalition. The Saudis want to cover up their other crime.”
In the interim, though, the ferocious fighting in Hodeidah continues. Janani said: “Many people here are too poor to escape, fuel is too expensive. We are stuck, always waiting, always afraid.”
(* A K)
Yemeni rebels say they halted Saudi-led forces at port city
Yemen's rebels claim they halted advances of their adversaries, the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led Arab coalition, at a key battlefield around a strategic Red Sea port city.
Fighting continued around Hodeida on Tuesday despite the statement from the Shiite rebels, also known as Houthis, that a three-pronged coalition assault had been stopped around the city's outskirts.
The Iran-backed Houthis said they lost at least 30 men and a dozen armored vehicles.
Dozens of fighters have been killed and hundreds wounded from both sides since a renewed coalition offensive on the city began five days ago, following calls by the Trump administration for a cease-fire by late November.
The fighting has left dead bodies lying on the ground and inside burnt-out vehicles at the city's edge, according to witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety. The witnesses also said several civilians have been killed by shelling in residential areas.
Local media reported that air raids by the Saudi-led coalition were continuing, as was sporadic fighting around Hodeida, especially along 50th street and the 7th of July neighborhoods in the east.
(* A K pH)
Aggression’s Daily Update for Tuesday, November 7th, 2018
In Hodiedah, the hysterical raids of the US-Saudi aggression and artillery shelling of the civilians' houses in Hodeidah resulted in the killing of 4 civilians and damaging a number of properties. US-Saudi aggression also destroyed a civilian's house in Al-Hale district and the Red Sea Mills also was targeted by several airstrikes.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3634&cat_id=1
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US-Saudi Aggression Destroys The Red Sea Mills in Hodeidah, Extensive Condemnation of The Crime
Red Sea Mills in Hodeidah were completely destroyed, on Tuesday, by dozens of the US-Saudi airstrikes. These were the only mills operating in Yemen, which millions of people relied on. Targeting them is a collective punishment to starve all Yemeni People.
The Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Social Affairs and a number of organizations condemned the US-Saudi targeting of the Red Sea Mills in Hodeidah, which stores tens of thousands of tons of wheat and flour for humanitarian assistance. The statement condemned the international silence on these terrible crimes that targeted the citizens' subsistence committed by the aggression following the military escalation in the province.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3632&cat_id=1
http://www.yamanyoon.com/?p=128689&fbclid=IwAR1hSvFkxBYVV5arUEzyxsAPwfQi4F9JppqUHZEcUNbp1MYR8HBX92GFNXk (with one photo)
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Transport Ministry Denies US-Saudi Allegations, Confirms Continuation of Services of The Red Sea Ports Corporation
The Ministry of Transport confirmed that the Yemeni Red Sea Ports Corporation continues to provide its services to all ships arriving at its ports, in a normal way and with its simple capabilities, which enable it to provide its services with ease. The Ministry of Transport denied in a statement received by the Yemeni News Agency (Saba) rumors exchanged by the aggression that the port of Hodeidah is closed and unable to receive ships.
The statement said that "these allegations are baseless," pointing out that they are part of the media war being waged by the aggression in order to intimidate citizens that the only outlet for food and medicine is closed. The statement pointed out that the US-Saudi aggression's targeting of the ports exceeded all laws, protocols and international conventions, especially Hodeidah port, the main artery of the Yemeni People, mentioning that the aggression's siege aims to exterminate the Yemeni People.
https://english.almasirah.net/details.php?es_id=3633&cat_id=1
(A H)
Despite all kind of challenges that we have been facing during our last distribution in #Hodeidah but fainally we made it and we delivered food aid baskets to 300 families in al-Durehimi district. We put our lives at risk in order to save other people lives (photos)
https://twitter.com/Fatikr/status/1059928945582358528
https://twitter.com/Fatikr/status/1059921182076616704
(A K)
Film (Arabic): a normal life in the province of Hodeidah despite the nose of the aggressor invader 06-11-2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ024WtD2wE
My comment: By Houthi Almasirah TV. I doubt on this; they will have carefully looked in which part of the city they could make this film.
(** B H K)
Yemen’s Civilians Face “Hell” as Saudis Launch Last-Ditch Effort to Build Leverage for Looming Talks
“After three days of calling for peace have passed, few people seem to be interested in peace … we see nothing but more escalation on all fronts,” a Hodeida resident told MPN.
“Before the war started, my family used to drink traditional Yemeni coffee on the rooftop of our home next to the University of Hodeida. During those long winter days years ago, my friend and I would go to the beach to play while the adults sat around and conversed, chewing gat leaves. When the U.S. recently called for a ceasefire, I asked myself: why should we have to wait another year to return home safely?”
Aisha Ahmed, a 22-year-old who lives just 100 meters from the University of Hodeida, pondered this question as she fled her home on Saturday as the Saudi-led coalition, supported by the United States, renewed its large-scale offensive on western Hodeida accompanied by heavy bombing runs on the many residential areas surrounding her home. The new offensive has thrown the port city, already suffering from an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, into despair.
So far, the violence — which erupted just hours after the U.S. called for a renewed effort to restart Yemen’s peace talks, a move welcomed by the Houthis — has been centered around Hodeida, especially in the areas near its university, its international airport, and the Kilo 16 district.
Over the weekend, over 200 coalition airstrikes using 500-pound guided bombs targeted families seeking shelter in attics near the university and the airport. 50th Street and the Kilo 16 district, home to the main highway linking Hodeida with Sanaa less than five kilometers from the city’s busy fish market, have seen some of the worst destruction since the beginning of the war.
Residents living near the University of Hodeida, where smoke and fumes are rising as a result of the incessant bombing, told MintPress that the sound of warplanes dropping bombs have pierced the sky since Friday afternoon. Residents estimate that at least 24 airstrikes have hit the areas directly surrounding the university, prompting them to seek shelter indoors as they fear to venture out of their homes.
Declining to give her last name, Mana’h, who beseeched international organizations to rescue her four children along with her mother-in-law, has been besieged in her home on 50th Street.
Mana’h told MintPress:
For three days, we’ve heard the sound of jets in the sky, intense shelling and air strikes, and they are still coming.”
Medical sources in Sanaa and Aden, where wounded and killed fighters are transported, told MintPress that over 200 fighters and civilians have been killed and dozens injured over the past 24 hours.
Forced to flee again
For days, Aisha Ahmed’s mother would pull her four children back from the windows every time the sound of warplanes grew close. Eventually, the airstrikes became too close for comfort and on Saturday, the family fled the area near the University of Hodeida to seek shelter in the heavily-defended city center. Aisha is one of the hundreds of civilians displaced by the recent offensive.
Civilians have continued to flee from their homes in the university, airport and 50th Street districts — areas which were considered relatively safe as they were far from the front lines before Thursday. Closing their shops and often leaving most of their possessions behind them, civilians are forced to flee in the shadow of apocalyptic scenes of destruction — miles of skeletal buildings full of the stench of corpses still trapped beneath mammoth slabs of concrete.
Red Cross spokeswoman Sara Alzawqari said an estimated 3,200 families in Hodeida – some 22,000 to 28,000 people — were in need of basic necessities including food, water and shelter.
“Over the past few days, I and others around the world have paid close attention to U.S.-led efforts to stop the war against Yemen. But after three days of calling for peace have passed, few people seem to be interested in peace … [we see] nothing but more escalation on all fronts,” Ahmed explained.
Abdullah Ali, a Yemeni analyst and politician, said the reason behind the recent escalation was the 30-day deadline for the resumption of peace talks announced by the U.S., which has been interpreted by the Saudis and Emiratis as an invitation to intensify their bombing campaign in order to take control of the strategic Hodeida port.
He expects the Saudi-led coalition to use Hodeida as a bargaining chip when they enter UN-brokered talks scheduled to take place in Sweden later this month, adding “it would be a blow to the Houthis and Hodeida residents if the coalition controlled the port just weeks before talks, but not a killer blow.” – by Ahmed AbdulKareem
cp2 Allgemein / General
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Stellungnahme von über 30 NGOs anlässlich der ersten Internationalen Parlamentarischen Konferenz für Frieden im Jemen
Als humanitäre, friedensbildende und Menschenrechtsorganisationen, die sich im Jemen engagieren, begrüßen wir das partei- und länderübergreifende Zusammentreffen von Abgeordneten zur ersten Internationalen Parlamentarischen Konferenz für Frieden im Jemen am 8. November in Paris. Die Teilnehmer/-innen fordern ihre Regierungen zur Zusammenarbeit auf, um die Krise in dem Land zu beenden. Mit 14 Millionen Männern, Frauen und Kinder - der Hälfte der Bevölkerung - am Rande einer Hungersnot, ist es mehr als allerhöchste Zeit zu handeln.
Wir fordern die Regierungen auf, für eine sofortige Einstellung der Kampfhandlungen zu sorgen, die Lieferung von Waffen zu unterbinden, die im Jemen eingesetzt werden könnten, sowie den ungehinderten Zugang und die Freizügigkeit von lebenswichtigen Gütern zu gewährleisten. Politische Entscheidungsträger müssen jegliche Angriffe auf Zivilisten und andere Verletzungen des humanitären Völkerrechts verurteilen und internationale Ermittlungen zu diesen Verletzungen unterstützen, einschließlich der Arbeit der UN-Expertengruppe zu Jemen.
Die Ereignisse der vergangenen Wochen haben zu der langen Liste von Beispielen dafür beigetragen, wie Saudi-Arabien das auf internationalen Regeln basierende System missachtet.
https://www.presseportal.de/pm/36565/4109377
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Und die Welt sieht zu
In Jemen toben die schwersten Gefechte seit Monaten, Hunderte Menschen sind umgekommen. Die Hälfte der Bevölkerung ist von einer akuten Hungersnot bedroht. Hoffnungen auf eine baldige Waffenruhe haben sich zerschlagen.
Am Donnerstag reagierte der UN-Sondergesandte Martin Griffiths: Er verschob eine neue Verhandlungsrunde bis Ende des Jahres, die er eigentlich bis Ende des Monats hatte zusammenbringen wollen. Zugleich wollen sich die UN nun auf einen Plan konzentrieren, um eine großflächige Hungersnot in Jemen abzuwenden.
Die neuen Kämpfe haben Zweifel geweckt, ob die USA bereit sind, Druck auf Riad und Abu Dhabi zu machen. Die von den beiden Golfstaaten angeführte Militärkoalition flog bis zu 200 Luftangriffe pro Tag, was ohne Zutun der USA schwer vorstellbar ist. Die Koalition ließ wissen, sie beziehe nur "defensive Positionen". Das aber ist angesichts der Vorstöße wenig glaubhaft.
Millionen Staatsbedienstete haben seit zwei Jahren keine Gehälter mehr bekommen
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/jemen-und-die-welt-sieht-zu-1.4204194
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Appell zur Schaffung von Sondertribunal für den Jemen-Konflikt
Arabische und türkische Politiker dringen in Istanbul auf Friedenslösung.
Arabische und türkische Politiker haben am Freitag bei einer Konferenz in Istanbulzur Einrichtung eines Sondertribunals für den Jemen-Konflikt aufgerufen.
In einer Erklärung forderten die Teilnehmer der von der jemenitischen Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Tawakkol Karman organisierten Konferenz ein "internationales Sondergericht für den Jemen, um die Verbrechen zu ahnden, die von den lokalen und internationalen Konfliktparteien verübt worden sind".
In dem Appell drängten die Teilnehmer zudem die internationale Gemeinschaft und die UNO, "sich ernsthaft und verantwortungsvoll für ein Ende des Krieges und die Wiederherstellung des Friedens" im Jemen einzusetzen.
(* B K P)
Civilian death toll in Yemen mounting despite US assurances
Airstrikes by Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen are on a pace to kill more civilians than last year, according to a database tracking violence in the country, despite the United States’ repeated claims that the coalition is taking precautions to prevent such bloodshed.
The database gives an indication of the scope of the disaster wreaked in Yemen by nearly four years of civil war. At least 57,538 people — civilians and combatants — have been killed since the beginning of 2016, according to the data assembled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED.
That doesn’t include the first nine months of the war, in 2015, which the group is still analyzing. Those data are likely to raise the figure to 70,000 or 80,000, ACLED’s Yemen researcher Andrea Carboni told The Associated Press. The organization’s count is considered by many international agencies to be one of the most credible, although all caution it is likely an underestimate because of the difficulties in tracking deaths.
The numbers don’t include those who have died in the humanitarian disaster caused by the war, particularly starvation. Though there are no firm figures, the aid group Save the Children estimated hunger may have killed 50,000 children in 2017. That was based on a calculation that around 30 percent of severely malnourished children who didn’t receive proper treatment likely died.
Renewed uproar over the destruction has put Washington in a corner.
https://apnews.com/24ee4b33373a41d389e2599c5aa7bbfa
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Yemen's women bear the brunt of war. Their demand for peace must be heard
It is not sufficient to deliver aid to Yemenis. We must use this moment to redouble efforts to secure a sustainable ceasefire and solution that meets Yemenis' aspirations
With the brutal conflict well into its fourth year, we must now ensure it translates into concrete progress for the Yemeni people. We, Yemeni women, have been working in solidarity to chart the way forward towards peace, but we are in dire need of international support.
The world’s worst humanitarian crisis
With recent calls for a ceasefire and an immediate resumption of the UN-led Yemeni political process, we cannot lose sight of what is at stake.
And as with most conflicts, women and girls bear the brunt of the suffering as well as the responsibility to sustain communities amidst economic hardships and social disintegration. The rates of early marriage are dramatically increasing as families use this as a coping mechanism for hunger.
Gender-based violence, including sexual violence cases, is increasing. Humanitarian programmes fall short of protecting women and girls in displacement. There are no protection mechanisms for female human rights defenders, activists and humanitarian workers who continue to be killed, arrested or harassed.
I am honoured to work alongside 60 accomplished Yemeni women leaders as part of the Yemeni Women Pact for Peace and Security, who are tirelessly working to serve and advocate for peace inside and outside Yemen.
Despite the difficulties, we continue to push ahead with our efforts and we continue our struggle to make the voice of Yemeni women and girls heard at home and abroad.
At the forefront of our calls is the need for credible pressure to stop the intransigence of the parties to the conflict, and to ensure a truly inclusive political process driven by us, Yemenis, and our priorities.
With the next round of UN consultations expected later this month, we are working with the UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, to deliver against these objectives. Crucially, as equal partners in Yemen’s struggle, we are demanding genuine participation of Yemeni women at the peace talks table. This is by no means unprecedented or complicated.
As Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference in 2014 clearly stipulated a 30 percent quota for women's inclusion in policymaking on Yemen, this is not an element to be brushed aside in an effort to avoid ruffling feathers.
It is not sufficient to deliver aid to Yemenis. We must use this moment to redouble efforts to secure a sustainable ceasefire and solution that meets Yemeni’s aspirations for our country, including its women. It is time for peace and time for women inclusion – by Sawsan Al-Refaei
https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/time-political-solution-yemen-now-568651834
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Saudis Are Turning Hospitals and Clinics into Piles of Ruins in Yemen
This is while the Saudis are regularly informed of the GPS coordinates of the medical sites where MSF works. So there is no way the Saudis with the capacity to carry out an airstrike or launch a rocket would not have known that these were functioning health facilities providing critical services and supported by MSF.
Under international humanitarian law, patients and medical facilities must be respected. This is while in violation of international humanitarian law, Saudi warplanes continue to target Yemeni hospitals. The siege means the only functioning hospital in Hodeida is also unable to have access to any medicine.
The neutrality of healthcare facilities and staff must be respected. They should never be attacked, and surgical and medical supplies should never be blocked from reaching the only hospital in Hodeida – something the US-backed Saudi-led invading forces have been doing for months in flagrant violation of international law.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13970818000807
Remark: From Iran. Well, in Hodeidah Houthi snipers installed themselves on the roof of May 22 Hospital.
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Film: World must stop arms sales to Saudi to end Yemen war: Analyst
The world should stop its arms sales to Saudi Arabia if it is serious about ending the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen, says a political analyst.
The comments came after the UN’s World Food Programme said it will nearly double food aid to Yemen to reach 14 million people a month.
“Unfortunately now you cannot use this as an indication to understand that there is real will and determination in order to end the tragedy which has been going on for over three years now. Unfortunately, the UN major countries that are permanent members of the UN Security Council, they are still providing the Saudis with the political cover they need in order to go on with this massacre,” Mohammad Obaid told Press TV in an interview on Friday.
“When you see real opposition, when you see real stoppage of arms deals with the Saudi government, when you see real opposition at the political level by the heads of states of these countries, then you can expect to say that or you can then that these remarks are real honest and will be used in order to end the conflict there,” he added.
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French researcher: UAE uses extremist groups in Yemen to strike the moderated stream
The French researcher Dr. François Bura said that Emiratis in Yemen are playing with extremist groups and using them to strike the moderated stream.
Bura, a researcher interested in Islamic group affairs, warned of the seriousness of dealing with extremists in this way, which he said gives extremist groups more influence and polarization.
He said that the support and recruitment by the UAE in Yemen of extremist groups comes in order to strike the moderated stream of political Islamism, foremost among which is the Yemeni Reform Party, which it regards as part of the "Muslim Brotherhood family " as he put it.
At an international conference held on Thursday, Tawakkol Karman International Foundation in the Turkish city of Istanbul titled "Yemen.. The challenges of war and the prospects for peace, he said, "external interventions in countries give militant groups a fertile environment for ascension and proliferation.
Bura gave three reasons for the rise of extremist groups of violence, foremost among them the failure of State institutions, and the second reason, according to Bura, is foreign intervention, the third reason being the support and backing of large states for "illegality" and the granting of dictatorships a license to kill their citizens. He spoke of the benefit of extremist groups of foreign intervention in a number of Arab countries, which said that its beginning was a foreign intervention in the Gulf, which gave al-Qaeda a fertile environment to build and polarize among enthusiastic youth.
At the conference, which was attended by a group of Yemeni, Arab and foreign scholars, Yemeni researcher Nasser Al-Mode’a, who said that the continuation of the war in this way is a disaster and stopped in the shadow of the al-Houthi group's adherence to weapons and control of the capital and a large area of Yemen and the dominance of the group on the strengths is also a disaster.
The applicant pointed out that the solution lies in the legitimacy of restoring the trust of the lost people and offering a different performance that helps to get out of this dark tunnel that has entered Yemen since the political forces began to conspire on some of them and colluded to tear down the country and each party was planning to take advantage of the moment of the militias marching towards the capital sun Bowl to serve its own agenda.
In her speech, the Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman called for a halt to the war in Yemen, an end to the coup d'état, the intervention of a UN committee to receive weapons from all armed militias, its handover to a state that protects everyone, and the resumption of the political process as it ceased in 2014, and in his final statement he stressed The Conference to redouble international efforts to help those affected by the war to avert the humanitarian catastrophe that is worsening every day.
The Conference stressed that the Arab coalition countries should assume their legal and moral responsibility to reconstruct the war-ravaged Yemen.
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160798
My comment: Karman is closely linked to Qatar, and she is a member of Muslim Brotherhood Islah Party. Up to the Saudi-Qatar brake, she supported the Saudi coalition war and stayed silent on Saudi air raids. But: Better late, than never.
And
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Istanbul conference calls for tribunal to judge Yemen 'crimes'
An Istanbul conference under the aegis of Nobel laureate Tawakkol Karman on Friday called for concrete measures to end the war in her native Yemen and an international court to judge those charged with crimes during the conflict.
The conference, which was organised by Karman's foundation, urged international players including the United Nations to take "deliberate and responsible actions to end the war and restore peace in Yemen".
The conference called for a "referendum on a draft constitution" and the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections "under UN supervision to ensure a peaceful and legitimate power transition".
The participants also sought the establishment of an international court on Yemen to consider "all crimes committed by the local and international partis in the conflict".
In a speech to the conference on Thursday, Karman called on Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to end their "unconstructive interference in Yemen and stop supporting terrorist groups and armed militias as well as mercenaries who have assassinated Yemenis in Aden and Taez."
But she also called for an end to interference "by the mullahs in Iran to try to control Yemen by supporting Huthi militias."
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Film: TERRORISM would kill America and everyone else, And FAMINE would kill Yemenis IF The Congress didn’t stop the Saudi war on Yemen NOW.
https://twitter.com/narrabyee/status/1060597928170061824
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Plagued By War and Famine, Yemen Is 'No Longer A Functioning State,' Journalist Warns
On the famine in Yemen
[A Saudi-led coalition of countries has] an economic embargo on Yemen, and in theory, this is to prevent the Houthis from getting the weapons that they need, but in effect, it is worsening the impact of this war in all kinds of terrible ways. For instance, essential food and medicines, which are in theory supposed to be let in, often get held up. The shipments get blocked in Djibouti before they can get to Yemen, or sometimes they arrive and they've expired.
I spent time with the minister of health in the Yemeni capital. He told me that so many essential medicines for diabetes — even things that have nothing to do with the war — people can't get those medicines and they're dying by the hundreds or by the thousands, in some cases, depending on the illness.
Then also, above and beyond what is officially blocked by the embargo, for instance, there's wheat, [which is] essential, because bread is a staple of life in Yemen. I have an old friend who's a wheat importer, who told me that the Saudis were blocking wheat shipments in ways that weren't called for by the embargo, and he's tried to get help from Britain and other countries in stopping the Saudis from doing this.
On Yemen's water shortage
That's afflicted Yemen for a long time. It's a very arid country and there are no real rivers in that part of Yemen. People have depended for a long time on groundwater. They drill down and take it from underwater flows and those have been getting lower and lower and lower. People have to drill further and further and further to get it.
That's also affecting the humanitarian situation, because as you drill down, the likelihood of getting contaminated or salty water gets higher. And so, up in the highlands, people are feeding their babies this contaminated water, which makes it only more likely that they'll get sick and and get diarrhea or cholera, one of those diseases, and die.
On if he considers Yemen a "failed state"
Yeah, definitely. I mean, people quibble over the definition of "failed state," but definitely. ... It's no longer a functioning state, and I think that even [if] there's a peace deal, the hard work is going to come after that, because in effect, it's like Somalia now. It's been broken up into these little bits and pieces and you have warlords who are earning rents in one way or another, and they don't want to relinquish what they have. It's going to be really hard to persuade them to lay down their weapons and to be part of some larger entity, and if that doesn't happen, you're still going to get left with this dangerous, unstable checkerboard of fiefdoms.
On the U.S. stake in the outcome of the war in Yemen
There are a couple of ways to look at this: One is that chaos in Yemen is just dangerous for the United States.
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Stop the Destruction of Yemen
Radhya Almutawakel and Abdulrasheed Alfaqih, the co-founders of the Yemeni human rights organization Mwatana, detail the crimes that the Saudi coalition has committed against the civilian population there.
Mwatana is a credible, respected, and independent human rights organization, and they have documented and criticized war crimes committed by all parties, including the Houthis, throughout the conflict. It is organizations like theirs that speak for Yemen’s civilians, whose interests and rights have been ignored and violated by all of the warring parties and their patrons. When they say that the Saudi coalition is intentionally bombing civilian targets and deliberately starving the civilian population, they are telling us the truth and giving us a much-neglected Yemeni perspective on the war that is destroying their country and pushing their people to the brink of famine. Our government is participating in a massive crime against an entire people, and up to 14 million innocent people are close to being starved to death by our clients. Yemenis have been shouting these truths at anyone who will listen for more than three years, but for the most part we have ignored or dismissed them. The war has to stop, and Congress has an opportunity to stop it by voting to end U.S. involvement in the war.
One of the serious failings in our foreign policy debates, including and especially the debate over the war on Yemen, is our obliviousness to the views of the people harmed by our policies. Yemenis have been rightly saying for years that the U.S. is helping the Saudi coalition to kill them and wreck their country, and they have been witnesses to the thousands of war crimes committed against them with U.S. weapons and support. Mwatana recently verified the use of U.S.-made weapons in a number of attacks on civilians, and of course those were just a fraction of the total in which U.S.-made weapons have been used. Yemenis have known all along that the U.S. was involved in the war against them and they have told us this again and again, but very few in the U.S. were listening to what they were saying.
Ending U.S. involvement in the war is only the first step, but without doing that it is unlikely that any of the rest will happen – by Daniel Larison
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/stop-the-destruction-of-yemen/
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These Are The Myths That Are Used To Justify UK Arms Sales To Saudi Arabia
The arms industry is not a major part of the economy. But it has always enjoyed a totally disproportionate voice in the corridors of power
Since the war began in March 2015, the UK government has licensed almost £5 billion worth of arms to the Saudi military. It’s justifications have been as predictable as they are misleading.
Argument 1: The Yemeni government asked Saudi Arabia to provide fighter jets and bombs, so the bombing has a UN mandate.
There is a debate about the extent to which UN resolution 2216 actually mandated the bombing campaign. However, even if we are to accept it as the legal basis of an intervention, it cannot be regarded as the basis for a war which has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
In short, the resolution did not call for a three and a half year bombardment which has killed thousands of people and destroyed vital infrastructure all across the country.
Argument 2: Arms sales give the UK influence, and if Saudi Arabia didn’t buy UK arms then it would simply buy them from someone else.
This argument can be used to justify selling anything to anyone in the world.
However, regardless of the questionable morality that underpins it, such an argument can’t actually be made about arms sales to Saudi Arabia. UK personnel play such a key role in servicing and maintaining the Saudi Air Force that its role could not be replaced overnight.
For the sake of argument, even if Saudi forces were to find another seller, the construction of new fighter jets, and the negotiations and integration required to replace its current relationship with the UK would take years. The war in Yemen could not be fought without the arms sales and cooperation of the UK and US. According to former CIA analyst Brucie Riedel “the Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and British support.”
Argument 3: Arms sales to Saudi Arabia are vital for the economy and provide much-needed jobs.
The arms industry is not a major part of the economy. But it has always enjoyed a totally disproportionate voice in the corridors of power.
According to the Aerospace, Defence & Security group, a trade body that represents arms companies, arms exports accounted for roughly 55,000 jobs. This figure, which is from 2010 so has almost certainly decreased in that time, equates to roughly 0.2% of the UK workforce. with arms counting for around 1.4% of exports.
For far too long, successive governments have talked about the importance of human rights and democracy while pouring arms into war zones and supporting some of the most authoritarian dictatorships in the world. The results have been devastating. It’s time for that complicity to end – by Andrew Smith
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/saudi-arabia-arms-sales_uk_5be1bb07e4b0bff8e2865a53
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Yemen: deaths for dollars in the desert
Despite increasing international rebukes for the renegade medieval monarchy, Saudi's war against Yemen continues with US support
The frequent strikes on markets, school buses and hospitals seldom make news in the United States. Is it because Yemen seems so far away, that the blood of children doesn’t seem to reach our fingertips?
Or is it because arms sellers’ profits from Yemen’s war are so substantial we don’t dare cut ties?
All of these air strikes were supported by the US, which supplied training, targeting support, in-flight refuelling and the bombs themselves. Yet US politicians mostly stay silent. Why?
Is it because the war in Yemen is so complicated? This is a cop-out — it’s our elected officials’ job to understand these intricacies and to act when situations are unjust.
I would argue it’s the cost-benefit ratio.
Leaving the on-the-ground fighting to Yemenis paid by their Gulf counterparts and leaving the actual air-striking to Saudi pilots, US officials are separated by enough degrees to not take direct responsibility.
Carrying even greater weight, especially by President Trump, is the financial benefit of this war. The US sells billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudis.
Deaths for dollars. The lives of tens of thousands of Yemenis for the financial gain of a few corporations. While there are obviously more reasons for the ongoing conflict than this, it’s an undeniable component.
The war in Yemen will continue until those in power decide their costs outweigh the benefits and until the rest of us insist on a cost for civilian lives – by Alex Potter
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/deaths-for-dollars-saudi-war-in-yemen-continues-with-u-s-support/ = https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/deaths-dollars-desert
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Britain needs to stop arming Saudi Arabia immediately
CHRIS NINEHAM calls the the anti-war movement to action with this simple yet crucial demand
THIS is a dangerous moment for the Middle East. Saudi-led forces have launched a new offensive on the Yemeni port of Hodeida. This is the country’s main port and the entry point for most of the country’s trade and for international aid.
If an attack forces the port at Hodeida to close, there will be carnage. The UN suggests as many as 13 million people may die as a direct result.
Last week, even leading US foreign policy hawks Mike Pompeo and James Mattis called publicly for peace talks. Since then, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has backed a UN call for a ceasefire.
Calls for peace are welcome, but there is a strong element of hypocrisy to these announcements. Britain and the US have been the main international supporters of the Saudi intervention.
It is disgraceful that it has taken the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi for either government to come out against the war on Yemen, but neither Britain nor the US seems prepared to make the move that could really make a difference — ending the arms sales to one of the most aggressive and authoritarian regimes in the world.
If a government which the West considered an enemy had been complicit in the extrajudicial killing of a journalist and was conducting a foreign war with such devastating consequences, there would have been uproar. Military intervention would have been threatened and probably actioned by this stage. As it is, Saudi Arabia is an ally.
It is not just arms sales that is driving our foreign policy here, however important these are to the British elites.
Saudi Arabia is regarded by both Britain and the US as a vital strategic ally in the Middle East. It has long opposed regimes and movements that have challenged Western power in the region and helped guarantee the flow of Middle Eastern oil to the West. Saudi Arabia’s role as the organising centre for reactionary politics in the Middle East has been boosted since the Arab spring. Over the last few years it has been building a regional bloc whose aim is to crush the power of Iran.
In their calls for peace talks, both Britain and the US have put the onus on the Houthis to stop fighting, never mind that Saudi Arabia is the foreign aggressor. Such one-sided demands make progress towards peace extremely difficult.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-needs-stop-arming-saudi-arabia-immediately
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Saudi Arabia’s War on Yemen Has Been a Political, Financial and Diplomatic Disaster
It’s all the reason why the Saudis, proxy forces, and regional vassals are so desperate to begin some so-called peace talks and end the costly war on the people of Yemen at the earliest. True, they have in the meantime been bombing the country. But that’s all really. The Saudis want to end the war before the war ends them! Their American allies also know that they can’t win it anyhow.
The Saudis and their allies know that they will be suffering if Riyadh makes the choice to continue the costly “proxy war”. Moreover, the political class in Riyadh is not willing to pay more for the war on Yemen - they have no money and they are beaten and bankrupt.
As it all stands, in their foolish agenda for regime change in Sana’a, the House of Saud got nothing. America was far bigger and far richer than Saudi Arabia, yet still got defeated and went bankrupt on the back of two illegal wars. The war on Yemen was not any different.
The “proxy war” of exorbitant air raids, precision-guided bombs, laser spotters, Tomahawk and Hellfire missiles - under the pretext of fighting alleged “Iranian-backed Houthis” – failed to succeed. It also ended with an insolvent Saudi Arabia. After all, Riyadh's very first and lethal mistake was calling a nation the agents of another country.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13970817000605
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Pro #Yemen govt/ anti Houthi tribal sheikh from Serwah Marib: 90% of airstrikes in Serwah hit civilians & civilian objects including homes, markets and farms
The coalition bombed farms and homes of civilians that are as far as 40 KM away from clash zones in Serwah and where Houthis are not even present.
https://twitter.com/Ndawsari/status/1060091001694576640
https://twitter.com/Ndawsari/status/1060098062499102720
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Films: An interesting session is moderated by Yemeni activist @IbrahimNYC with experts discussing peace opportunities and roots of the conflict in #Yemen.
https://twitter.com/Kawkab/status/1060488191524982785
.@NaBiLAlbaydani from @SAM4rights speaks now about the prevailing inequalities in #Yemen including race and gender.
https://twitter.com/BelqeesRights/status/1060493615074631680
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Map: Yemen: Access Constraints as of 08 November 2018
https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-access-constraints-08-november-2018
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Film by
NRC - Norwegian Refugee Council: Yemenis in free fall after one year of blockade
One year after the Saudi-led Coalition imposed a blockade on sea, land and air routes into Yemen, millions more are edging closer to famine and fatal disease. This is what needs to happen.
https://www.facebook.com/norwegianrefugeecouncil/videos/1231805903626282
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Hodeida People’s Health, Security and Safety Depend on UN Intervention
Saudi airstrikes and warships continue to pound the Yemeni port city of Hodeida, with escalating strikes coinciding with Saudi-backed ground forces' failed offensives whose objective was advancing closer to the city.
This further limits the movement of aid into and out of the vital port, which before the Saudi offensive was the lone source of food imports for 80% of Yemen. Saudi forces control the supply lines, and promises of an aid corridor haven’t panned out so far.
Of course, international aid groups have been quick to react. They are now warning that thousands of civilians left in Hodeida are effectively trapped, increasing the humanitarian crisis. But this is not enough.
True, the United Nations has also reiterated calls for urgent peace talks to prevent the famine threatening millions of lives. The US and the UK have also called for an immediate ceasefire, while they both continue weaponizing the Saudis and refueling their warplanes, but there is no sign the Saudi offensive is slowing down.
The UN has even confirmed in considerable detail misdeeds by the Saudi-led coalition, but it is yet to launch any international probe or to haul the Saudis before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes. The world body has equally failed to force the United States to ban the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia under International Law and International Humanitarian Law, which is a shame.
Indeed, the world body has what it takes to stop this murderous campaign. Access for humanitarian aid workers to reach people in need is critical to respond to the massive humanitarian crisis in Hodeida. People need to be able to voluntarily flee the fighting to access humanitarian assistance. Because of the blockade this is yet to be the case.
Saudi Arabia, the United States and other parties to this dirty conflict must respect their obligations under International Humanitarian Law and those with influence over them at the UN must ensure that everything possible is done to protect civilians.
The UN should further stop the US from providing the Saudis with diplomatic protection at the UN for mid-air refueling, intelligence assessments and other military advice. The world body knows fully well that without Washington’s much-needed military and diplomatic assistance, the Saudi regime cannot continue its murderous charge.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13970816000635
My comment: From Iran; it’s true anyway.
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Yemen faces ‘one of the biggest humanitarian crises in history’
Yemen is facing one of the biggest humanitarian crises in history and the international community made a mistake by giving a freehand to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, stated Tawakkol Karman, renowned Yemeni human rights activist and the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Speaking at the Distinguished Lecture event organised by Brookings Doha Centre on Tuesday, she said the international community has by now awakened to the reality.
“With the US giving a call for ceasefire, the war, in all likelihood, is going to come to an end soon. However, the major challenge will be rebuilding the country. As described by the UN, it is the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. The entire country is on the brink of famine with almost more than half the population seriously affected,” she said.
The event was moderated by Folly Bah Thibault, principal presenter at Al Jazeera English. With the focus on “From War to Famine: How to end Yemen’s Violent Conflict?” Karman said that the humanitarian crisis is the biggest problem that the nation will be facing for some time to come.
“Even if the war ends, the humanitarian crisis is the biggest issue. People especially children are suffering from malnutrition. The health and educational facilities are severely affected by the war that has been going on for the last four years. People are struggling in the absence of many of the basic needs and amenities,” said Karman.
She blamed Saudi Arabia and the UAE for the agony inflicted on the people of Yemen. “The UAE and Saudi Arabia played an undermining role in Yemen’s transition phase that followed after the non-violent struggle in 2011. Ultimately Saudi Arabia wanted to control every part of Yemen leading to severe problems in the country. If Saudi Arabia and the UAE had not interfered, we could have had national reconciliation leading to a stable government,” maintained the activist.
https://www.gulf-times.com/story/612262/Yemen-faces-one-of-the-biggest-humanitarian-crises
My comment: Karman had taken side with the Saudi coalition and the Hadi government, simply neglecting air raids and blockade. She just changed her mind after the Saudi-Qatar rupture.
(* B K P)
Film: Yemen’s War Between Local Complexities and Regional Proxies
Here is the video of the talk I hosted last week with @almuslimi for @uOttawaCIPS on the domestic and regional dimensions of the war in Yemen (Farea al-Muslimi, co-founder of Sanaa Center)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gstUZkz06U
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Jamal's Khashoggi's legacy should be peace in Yemen
The focus of the international community on this murder, and its demands for accountability, cannot however be limited to this one case. The callous disregard for one life should be an alarm bell about decisions by the same government that are affecting the lives of millions. This is where the ceasefire call by Secretary Pompeo could be so significant.
The humanitarian suffering is not a natural tragedy but a man-made catastrophe.
So Saudi Arabia's allies in the war effort, led by its closest partners the US and UK, need to deploy their political and military leverage to end the current war strategy.
Secretary Pompeo's ceasefire call needs to be codified immediately in a new UN Security Council resolution.
Military support from the UK and US for the war strategy should stop forthwith to keep this from being a rhetorical exercise.
There needs to be practical measures to make peace sustainable.
There is also the tougher question of accountability for war crimes that have been documented by the UN.
The suffering in Yemen has gone unacknowledged for far too long - and has emboldened those willing to act with impunity. Jamal Khashoggi's legacy should be accountability not just for the suffering of one, but of millions – By David Miliband
https://us.cnn.com/2018/11/07/opinions/khashoggi-death-war-in-yemen-miliband-opinion-intl/index.html
cp2a Saudische Blockade / Saudi blockade
(B H P)
CARE: A Country in Crisis: One Year Since the Yemen Blockade (Infographic)
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/country-crisis-one-year-yemen-blockade
cp3 Humanitäre Lage / Humanitarian situation
Siehe / Look at cp1
(* B H)
Film: Jemen: Schwere Hungersnot | Weltbilder | NDR
Laut UN sind durch den Bürgerkrieg bald 14 Millionen Menschen auf Hilfe angewiesen. Kinder sterben an Unterernährung, denn Hilfslieferungen kommen kaum noch an.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGUoWhHAiio
(* B H)
UN-Hilfswerk muss 14 Millionen Menschen im Jemen versorgen
Angesichts der verheerenden Hungerkrise im Jemen will das Welternährungsprogramm (WFP) seine Hilfslieferungen in dem arabischen Land nahezu verdoppeln. Künftig sollen 14 Millionen Menschen jeden Monat Essensrationen erhalten, kündigte WFP-Sprecher Herve Verhoosel am Freitag in Genf an. Bislang hat das WFP sieben bis acht Millionen Menschen versorgt.
Die Aufstockung der Hilfe soll nach Angaben der UN-Organisation ein Massensterben abwenden. Im Jemen droht die aktuell größte Hungersnot der Welt. Die Lage von Millionen Kindern, Frauen und Männern verschlimmere sich jeden Tag durch eine von Menschen gemachte Krise.
Verhoosel betonte, dass die Erhöhung der Hilfe eine großangelegte logistische Operation erfordere. Das WFP benötige zusätzliche Mitarbeiter, Transportmöglichkeiten, Sicherheitsvorkehrungen und Finanzmittel.
Als Hauptgrund für die Not im Jemen nennt das WFP den Krieg, den die Regierung und die von Saudi-Arabien geführte Militärkoalition gegen die vom Iran unterstützten Huthi-Rebellen führen.
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"Größte humanitäre Katastrophe der Welt"
Hilfsorganisationen sind in Sorge um die Lage der Zivilisten in dem Bürgerkriegsland. Das Welternährungsprogramm kündigte an, seine Lebensmittelhilfen verdoppeln zu wollen. Sprecherin Reem Nada sagte in den tagesthemen, dass nur noch ein Drittel der Menschen mit Lebensmitteln versorgt werden könne. Alle zehn Minuten stirbt im Jemen ein Kind.
Ein weiterer Sprecher des Welternährungspogramms (WFP) sagte, derzeit würden täglich Nahrungsmittel für sieben bis acht Millionen Menschen ausgeliefert. Das neue Ziel sei es, 14 Millionen Menschen mit Essen zu versorgen. Das bedeute eine "riesige Menge" logistischer Arbeit, finanzieller Mittel und Vorbereitung. Vor allem aber müsse die Gewalt in dem Land sofort enden, mahnte der Sprecher. "Sonst wird der Jemen ein Land der Gespenster, mit Menschen, die nur noch Knochengerüste sind."
Die Vereinten Nationen hatten im Oktober gewarnt, dass im Jemen 14 Millionen Menschen vom Hunger bedroht seien, fast die Hälfte der Bevölkerung (mit Film)
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/jemen-661.html
Film: https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-469589.html
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A country in freefall, with half its population at risk of famine. All because of an avoidable war
Hunger became starvation and is about to lurch into famine. A failing state failed and an economic crisis became a catastrophe. An insurgency became a civil war and then a regional conflict involving Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Over the past decade, Yemen's vicious cycle has become a downward spiral -- a predictable and preventable spiral. It is a country "in freefall," says the Norwegian Refugee Council. Eight million people are on the brink of famine. UN officials say that number may quickly rise to more than 12 million -- about half of Yemen's population -- unless the fighting stops.
Nearly half a million Yemeni children are chronically malnourished; many are likely to die within the next few months if the conflict continues. Cholera (there were 13,000 cases reported in October alone) and other diseases stalk the land.
How did the poorest country in the Arab world and now one of the poorest on earth reach this nadir? And what if anything can be done to mitigate (let alone reverse) what threatens to become the worst famine anywhere in more than a generation?
Decline and fall
Yemen never had much going for it -- few natural resources, a lack of water, endless tribal and civil conflict, religious divides and bad government. But those seem like the good old days.
In a recent study of the coalition's bombing strategy for the World Peace Institute, Martha Mundy said it had "aimed to destroy food production and distribution" in areas controlled by the Houthis, with hundreds of strikes against rural targets. Mundy told CNN that economic warfare was aimed at bringing people to their knees -- essentially: "When we control them, then we'll feed them."
Saudi Arabia's western allies have made indignant noises about the scale and indiscrimination of the coalition's campaign -- but have continued to sign lucrative weapons contracts. The bombs that fall from Saudi aircraft are made in the USA
Yemen's lifeline
Hodeidah, the country's largest port, is now at the center of the conflict. It has been under bombardment for much of the past five months.
An end to the fighting
Only one thing can save Hodeidah, and Yemen: an immediate ceasefire followed by internationally sponsored negotiations, and the free movement of relief supplies.
The Khashoggi effect
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/09/middleeast/yemens-plight-lister-analysis-intl/
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World Food Programme: Yemen: Final call
World Food Programme (WFP) ready to assist half of Yemen’s population as hunger numbers are expected to spiral
The warning from WFP is stark: “The violence must stop now to give Yemen a chance to pull back from the brink. Unless it does, this will become a country of living ghosts, its people reduced to sacks of bones.”
“Humanitarians can only do so much in the face of relentless bombing and unconscionable war tactics that spare no one,” the agency added as its Executive Director prepares to travel to the war-torn country next week.
Over three years of conflict, economic collapse, rising prices and a shattered supply and distribution chain are pushing more and more Yemenis into hunger.
The number of people classified as in an ‘emergency’ situation — one step below famine in the internationally-recognized Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) scale — currently stands at just under 8 million. However, a new assessment due to be released later this month is expected to show figures spiralling to as many as 14 million people — half of Yemen’s population.
Nearly two million children are acutely malnourished, which makes them more vulnerable to disease. In hospitals across the country, malnourished children can barely gather the strength to breathe. Unless urgent action is taken, a whole generation is at risk.
In anticipation of the rise in hunger being confirmed, WFP stands ready to assist as many as 14 million people if needed.
WFP needs safe, immediate and unimpeded access to bring in food and other vital supplies to save lives. Intense fighting in and around the port city of Hodeidah — through which 70 percent of the country’s imports transit — has caused major delays in the arrival of humanitarian and commercial cargo. As a result, the price of food in shops has shot up beyond the reach of many people.
https://insight.wfp.org/yemen-9d5d0f758cf6 = https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-final-call
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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: Yemen Humanitarian Update Covering 22 October – 6 November 2018 | Issue 31
KEY ISSUES:
UN calls for urgent action on five key points to avert an imminent humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.
A total of 118 humanitarian partners operate in the 333 districts of Yemen providing assistance to as many as 8 million people per month.
Armed clashes, airstrikes and artillery shelling continued around the airport and Kilo 10 to the south and east of Al Hudaydah City; fighting was also reported on the Hays frontline.
• Partners identified 80,763 displaced families from Al Hudaydah hosted in Al Hudaydah, Hajjah, Raymah and Al Mahwit governorates; 71,363 of these households have been assisted since June.
US$87 million has been allocated to 75 projects under the first Standard Allocation 2018 of the Yemen Humanitarian Fund, and will benefit over 3 million Yemenis in 19 governorates.
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US Agency for International Development. Yemen - Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #2, Fiscal Year (FY) 2019
USAID partners provide assistance to address food insecurity, including critical health, nutrition, and WASH services
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) anticipates that food security in Yemen will likely deteriorate further in the coming months, with the potential for Famine—IPC 5—levels of acute food insecurity to develop in areas dependent on imports or affected by conflict and population displacement. The number of Yemenis exhibiting poor or boderline levels of food consumption increased by nearly 50 percent between mid-July and October, from 8.1 million people to nearly 12 million people, according to the UN World Food Program (WFP) Mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (mVAM) unit.
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-complex-emergency-fact-sheet-2-fiscal-year-fy-2019
Map: Yemen ‑ Active USG Programs for Yemen Response (Last Updated 11/09/18)
https://reliefweb.int/map/yemen/yemen-active-usg-programs-yemen-response-last-updated-110918
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Kuwait Fund for Development resumes project implementation in Yemen
http://almasdaronline.com/articles/160784
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Maps showing famine risk and internal displacement in Yemen
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1060494642641199104
(A H)
I arrived yesterday to #Hodeidah and I used a motorbike to take 3 malnourished children from their villages to the nutrition center.
Driving a car in these villages is too risky.
I will post in thread about the 3 children.
https://twitter.com/AhmadAlgohbary/status/1060591613020434432
I will share the good news today. This is Ferial, 2 years old. Lives in Altorba area, #Hodeidah. She is suffering from an acute severe malnutrition and she is in the nutrition center now for treatment. #Yemen. Special thanks to all donors& @LayaBehbahani helping this child (photo)
https://twitter.com/AhmadAlgohbary/status/1060960573175799809
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Human Appeal: Yemen Emergency Appeal
In Yemen, a child dies every ten minutes. People are eating leaves to survive. Yet 42% of the UK don’t know about the crisis. Please help Yemen now.
Human Appeal has been working in Yemen since 2014, running programmes to alleviate the suffering created as the conflict rages on. This year alone, Human Appeal has helped over 165,000 Yemenis through life saving support provision in health, nutrition, access to clean water, food security, shelter, protection and education interventions in the most affected areas across the country.
Just £100 will go towards helping thousands of people through our health and nutrition project, including malnutrition services, services for children and pregnant women, and the supply of healthcare professionals.
https://humanappeal.org.uk/appeals/yemen-emergency-appeal
Film: Forgotten. Forsaken. Erased.
Human Appeal teamed up with Amina Atiq, a Yemeni spoken word artist, in an effort to bring more attention to Yemen's situation.
The people of Yemen are running out of time. Share this video. Alert your friends and families to their plight and donate today.
https://www.facebook.com/HumanAppeal.UK/videos/vb.175608624750/926522147529688/
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WFP to double food aid to Yemen, says 14 million risk starvation
The World Food Programme plans to double its food assistance program for Yemen, aiming to reach up to 14 million people “to avert mass starvation”, it said in a statement on Thursday.
“Yemen is the largest hunger crisis in the world. Millions of people are living on the edge of famine and the situation is getting worse by the day,” said the U.N. agency, which is already providing food assistance to 7-8 million Yemenis.
“WFP food and other humanitarian support has been instrumental in helping to prevent famine, but the indications are that even greater efforts will be needed to avert mass starvation.”
Food security experts including U.N. and Yemeni government officials conducted an assessment in Yemen last month and are expected to issue their report this month, declaring whether or not parts of the country are in famine.
(A H)
Pictures taken in al-Durehimi district of Hodeidah in western #Yemen during food aid distribution carried out by @monarelief Please keep donating to support more families in my country. Cc @Fatikr @monareliefye
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/feed-hungry-children-in-hajjah-province-of-yemen#/
https://twitter.com/monarelief/status/1060207432377552897
https://twitter.com/monarelief/status/1060208076895277056
https://twitter.com/monarelief/status/1060207881734311937
https://twitter.com/monarelief/status/1060208376305672193
https://twitter.com/monarelief/status/1060208583776878592
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YEMEN AID
Changing Lives. Saving Lives. One Family at a Time.
Yemen Aid provides much needed humanitarian assistance and resources to the Yemeni people, regardless of race, political affiliation, ancestry or religion, in a timely and efficient manner in order to positively change lives, and ultimately save lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Nh803WlpI
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Yemen: The 10-year-old boy who weighs just 10kg in a country on the brink of famine
He is one of 400,000 children who suffer from severe acute malnutrition in a country the UN says is on the brink of famine.
Adam is 10 years old. He weighs just 10kg (22lbs) - a little heavier than a bowling ball.
He is too weak to get out of his hospital bed by himself in Yemen, where he lies crying and still.
Adam finds it difficult to breathe and his tiny chest heaves with the effort.
He is one of 400,000 children who suffer from severe acute malnutrition in a country the UN says is on the brink of famine.
Now lying in hospital in Hodeida, he should at least be safe and able to focus on his recovery.
But as fighting in the Yemeni port city continues - with almost 100 airstrikes falling on it this weekend alone - the conflict moves closer and closer to Al Thawra hospital.
According to UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore, the fighting is now "dangerously close" and is "putting the lives of 59 children, including 25 in the intensive care unit, at imminent risk of death".
Heavy bombing and gunfire can be heard from Adam's hospital bed.
She told Sky News: "Adam who is 10 years old and who weighs 10kgs is someone that will never leave me.
"He lay there, crying in pain.
"Adam was not able to utter a word. All he did was to cry in pain without tears but making the sound of pain."
Locals worry constantly about money and being unable to buy food, Ms Touma said.
"Poverty is very visible, people are just exhausted," she said.
Civil servants, including doctors and teachers, have not been paid for more than two years and the devaluation of the currency means that despite food being on sale in markets most families cannot afford to buy it.
Adam, who also has a brain condition and shares his ward with other severely malnourished children, was unable to access health care until his family were able to save up to afford the transport to take him there.
She believes if it wasn't for the intervention of organisations like her own "the situation is likely to have been even worse, much worse".
She added: ""It is literally lifesaving for many, many children." (with photos)
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Where Does the UN Security Council Stand on Yemen?
A Yemeni father’s voice, proudly telling us about his son, was nevertheless infused with sorrow: Ahmed was about 12 and smart. He lived with his father, his mother and his eight siblings until “the war came.”
The Saudi-led coalition bombed their home about a year ago. The Houthi armed group that had terrorized the family was left unscathed, but Ahmed was severely wounded. For 10 days, he didn’t speak; fragments had entered his brain. His father traveled with him from city to town to city trying to get help. The rest of the family was displaced along Yemen’s west coast, until fighting reached them again this February. The father needed to stay with his son. The family couldn’t go back to its home, east of Khawka town; friends said the area had been mined.
Yemeni doctors were able to help Ahmed, but he needed surgery that was not available in his country. His father couldn’t afford it. Friends told the family that the Saudi-led coalition paid only for wounded fighters to get treatment abroad. Even if they gave him a ticket, he said, he was worried he wouldn’t be able to fly: since the attack, he was afraid of closed spaces. Ahmed showed us the scar on his head. It still hurt.
This is the story of a Yemeni family today and for the last four years: a father whose child was hurt when he shouldn’t have been. A father who desperately wanted to protect his family but couldn’t see how. A father who wanted to help his son heal but did not have the means. A father who had knocked on every door he could think of but found them all closed.
Those doors remain jammed shut because those with power choose not to use it to pressure those responsible to end these abuses – by Kristine Beckerle, HRW
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/08/where-does-un-security-council-stand-yemen = https://www.passblue.com/2018/11/07/where-does-the-un-security-council-stand-on-yemen/
(A H)
Film: Good news: I am going from #Sanaa to #Hodeidah now to take 2 malnourished children from their villages to the nutrition center in the city. Special thanks to the donors and @LayaBehbahani for helping these children. #Yemen.
https://twitter.com/AhmadAlgohbary/status/1060157393680642048
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Qatar Charity provides food aid to 26,000 displaced Yemenis
Qatar Charity (QC) has recently distributed 3,700 food baskets to the displaced people of Al Hudaydah Governorate in the capital Sana'a. The baskets worth up to QR 800,000 have benefited 26,000 people experiencing acute food insecurity
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/qatar-charity-provides-food-aid-26000-displaced-yemenis
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Peter Salisbury: I've been thinking a lot about the humanitarian situation in #Yemen recently. There is a fair chance that famine will be declared there soon. People will respond with shock and surprise. But people need to know that this was absolutely predictable and preventable.
What makes me say that? Here's something I wrote in 2012, more than six years ago, three years before the war started, about life for #Yemen's poorest people.
Even before 2011, economists were warning hat left to its own devices #Yemen faced a huge financial, fiscal and economic crisis . We got a sneak preview of what that looked like during the Arab Spring uprisings. The poverty rate jumped to more than 50% of the population.
And then from 2012 onwards, most smart observers were warning of 1) civil conflict and 2) the economic impact a war would have. Ironically, a greater focus on the economy and service provision in Sana'a could have prevented a war. But these things weren't the top priority.
When the war started, the warnings increased, especially when it became clear that all parties to the conflict were weaponizing the economy. Here's something on that from last year:
Without huge relief efforts from the UN and others #Yemen would already be in the midst of a horrible famine. But they have only been able to slow the downwards trajectory, not stop it entirely. Humaniarians' message: The only way to prevent mass starvation is ending the war.
If and when famine is declared, we can expect a lot of hand-wringing and questions like: How did this happen. So please understand. The people who needed to know, knew. They were told this would happen. They just had other priorities.
I'm ashamed I didn't do more. The people who helped usher #Yemenis into starvation through political indifference and through straight-up power hungriness and self-interest ought to feel shame too. But instead, they'll try and point fingers and blame the other guy.
https://twitter.com/peterjsalisbury/status/1059823630144753664
and referring to https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2012/04/21/disaster-approaching (from 2012)
https://agsiw.org/bickering-while-yemen-burns-poverty-war-and-political-indifference/ (from 2017)
(A H)
Film (Arabic): Amal Hussein victim of malnutrition victims in the Directorate of Aslam in Hajja province
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seGyvKVQ694
(B H)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: The world cannot stand by watching Yemen’s human tragedy: Briefing to UN Permanent Representatives in New York on food security, migration
The international community is failing to end hunger, evidenced by the tragic crisis in Yemen, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) José Graziano da Silva told a high-level briefing on food insecurity to Member States at the United Nations in New York.
"We are watching before our eyes an unprecedented human tragedy," Graziano da Silva said in New York in reference to the ongoing conflict in Yemen which has caused up to 14 million people to be at risk of severe food insecurity, including children facing the worst extremes of hunger.
"Yemen is living proof of an apocalyptical equation: conflicts and food security go hand in hand, and when there is an overlap of climate change and conflict, famine is already on the horizon," he said.
The briefing by FAO, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development focused on the causes and implications of the recent rise in global hunger, and efforts needed to put the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger back on track.
cp4 Flüchtlinge / Refugees
(B H)
UN High Commissioner for Refugees: UNHCR Yemen Situation: 2018 Funding Update (as of 5 November 2018)
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/unhcr-yemen-situation-2018-funding-update-5-november-2018
(B H)
UN High Commissioner for Refugees: Somalia UNHCR Operational update Somalia 1-30 September 2018
https://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/somalia-unhcr-operational-update-somalia-1-30-september-2018
UNHCR Somalia Factsheet - 1 - 31 October 2018
https://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/unhcr-somalia-factsheet-1-31-october-2018
(A H)
UN High Commissioner for Refugees: UNHCR Somalia: Refugees and Asylum-seekers Statistical Report - 31 October 2018
From Yemen: 12,071 refugees.
Vorige / Previous:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose/jemenkrieg-mosaik-477-yemen-war-mosaic-477
Jemenkrieg-Mosaik 1-477 / Yemen War Mosaic 1-477:
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/dklose oder / or http://poorworld.net/YemenWar.htm
Der saudische Luftkrieg im Bild / Saudi aerial war images:
(18 +, Nichts für Sensible!) / (18 +; Graphic!)
http://poorworld.net/YemenWar.htm
http://yemenwarcrimes.blogspot.de/
und alle Liste aller Luftangriffe / and list of all air raids:
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