Dubai: The Emirates Red Crescent (ERC) has distributed food baskets to underprivileged families and people with special
needs in the Al Sawm District, Wadi Hadramout, as part of the UAE’s relief programme in Yemen.
Ahmad Al Neyadi, Deputy Head of the ERC team in Hadramout, said the delivery of food assistance is part of the UAE’s humanitarian efforts to alleviate economic suffering of the Yemeni people caused by the Iran-backed Al Houthi militia.
“The ERC will continue its humanitarian projects to assist those in need in Yemen,” he affirmed.
Yemeni officials thanked the ERC for extending assistance to the needy people in different parts of Yemen and its food, health and development assistance to improve living of the Yemeni people.
Beneficiaries said the food assistance would enhance their resilience to face the difficult circumstances they are experiencing due to the weak economic conditions and lack of sources of income.
More than 8,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in the conflict, which has pushed the country to the brink of famine.
A cholera outbreak has also claimed the lives of more than 1,800 people since April, with 400,000 suspected cases across the country, according to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The UN last week warned 80 per cent of Yemen’s children were in desperate need of aid in what the organisation has described as the “largest humanitarian crisis in the world”.
Meanwhile, more than 40 troops and rebels have been killed in several days of clashes between Yemen’s Saudi-backed army and insurgents allied with Iran near the Red Sea port of Mokha, officials said on Sunday.
Sixteen Al Houthi rebels and seven soldiers were killed in overnight clashes east of Mokha, a key waterway for international trade and imports currently held by the army, according to military officials and witnesses at hospitals in the area.
Twenty Yemeni soldiers were also killed in a rebel strike on a major military base in Taiz province, around 40 kilometres east of Mokha, on Thursday, a military official there said.
Authorities on Saturday said Al Houthis had attacked the Mokha port with a remote-controlled boat carrying explosives. No casualties were reported.
The Saudi-led coalition also said a ballistic missile fired by Al Houthis was shot down on Thursday near Makkah in Saudi Arabia, the site of the annual Muslim Haj pilgrimage that falls next month.
Backed by the Arab coalition, the legitimate government of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi has battled Al Houthi rebels for control of the impoverished country for two years after the Iran-backed group carried out a coup.
