Dubai: Wheat silos in Yemen’s port city of Hodeida have been damaged by a fire caused by suspected mortar shelling, threatening food supplies for millions of hungry people, the United Nations said.

The blaze damaged two silos at the Red Sea Mills grains facility, which holds 51,000 tonnes of World Food Programme (WFP) wheat -- enough to feed 3.7 million people for a month in the war-torn country.

“WFP urgently needs to get access ... so we can assess the level of damage and begin transporting the unaffected wheat stocks to areas of Yemen where it is desperately needed,” country director Stephen Anderson said in a statement on Friday.

The WFP has been unable to access Red Sea Mills on the eastern edges of the city since September due to fighting between Iranian-backed Al Houthi militants that controls Hodeida and other Yemeni forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition that are massed on the outskirts.

A source in the coalition said the silos were hit by Al Houthi mortars.

“The world cannot turn a blind eye to these violations, and the coalition will not tolerate them for much longer,” the source from the alliance told Reuters on Saturday.

Al Houthis and the Saudi-backed government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi agreed at UN-sponsored talks in December on a ceasefire and troop withdrawal from Hodeida, the entry point for the bulk of Yemen’s commercial and aid imports.

Repeated Al Houthi violations of the ceasefire have occurred prompting officials in the coalition to call on the international community to blame Al Houthis for the breach.

The port used to supply food to Yemen’s 30 million people became the focus of fighting last year, raising fears that a full-scale assault could cut off supply lines.

The legitimate government backed by the coalition says Al Houthis are using the port to smuggle in weapons from Iran.

That is why they want to retake the port but they held off an assault to give room for negotiations which led to an agreement in Sweden in December for a truce on the condition that Al Houthis hand over control.

The government says they have not been honest in implenting the deal.

“A quarter of a million people are in a catastrophic condition, facing near starvation if assistance doesn’t get to them,” Lise Grande, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, said in Friday’s statement. “This is the first time we are seeing conditions like this. We need this wheat.”

Yemen descended into war after pro-democracy unrest forced late former president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

Hadi was elected to a two-year term to head the internationally-backed government but Al Houthis orchestrated a coup in late 2014, prompting the coalition to intervene in 2015 to restore his government.