WHO Calls for Access to Yemen’s “Virtually Besieged” City of Taiz

LONDON, Jan 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday appealed for immediate access to the Yemeni city of Taiz where it said all hospitals had been forced to close some services and were overwhelmed with wounded patients.
WHO said its trucks carrying oxygen, medicines and medical supplies had not been able to enter Taiz, Yemen’s third city, since mid-December.
“We have five trucks waiting to enter Taiz but we’re not able to do that despite the fact that we’ve got all the approvals from all the parties,” Ahmed Shadoul, WHO representative in Yemen, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“The trucks are around Taiz city and they have been there for almost three weeks but we didn’t manage to get into the city,” he said by phone from Yemen.
More than 250,000 people in Taiz have been living under “virtual siege” since November, WHO said. It called on all parties to the conflict to allow the secure movement and delivery of medical and humanitarian supplies.
WHO said such supplies were urgently needed in Al-Thawra, Al-Jumhoori, Al-Rawdhaand Al-Mudhaffar hospitals.
“The situation is deteriorating and the needs are huge,” Shadoul said.
A Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war in March to try to restore the government after it was toppled by Iran-allied Houthi forces, but a mounting civilian death toll and dire humanitarian situation has alarmed human rights groups.
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday urged the warring parties in Yemen to resume a “meaningful, sustainable” ceasefire after the coalition ended a more than two-week-old truce amid accusations it had been repeatedly violated by both sides.
The ceasefire began on Dec. 15 in tandem with U.N.-brokered peace talks. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, almost half of them civilians.
The United Nations has designated Yemen as one of its highest-level humanitarian crises, alongside emergencies in South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. It says more than 21 million people in Yemen need help, or about 80 percent of the population.