A woman sits next to her son who is infected with cholera at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting against the Houthi movement in Yemen said on Monday it would close all air, land and sea ports to the Arabian Peninsula country to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. "The situation is catastrophic in Yemen, it is the worst food crisis we are looking at today, 7 million people are on the brink of famine, millions of people being kept alive by our humanitarian operations," Jens Laerke of the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told a briefing.
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Rupert Colville, UN human rights spokesman, said the office would study whether the blockade amounted to "collective punishment", unlawful under international law. The World Health Organisation added that the coalition blockade will stymie its effort to fight cholera in Yemen, where cases now exceed 900,000 including 2,194 deaths.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen said on Monday it would close all air, land and sea ports to the Arabian Peninsula country to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. "The Coalition Forces Command decided to temporarily close all Yemeni air, sea and land ports," the coalition said in a statement on the Saudi state news agency SPA.
The U.N. and international aid organisations have repeatedly criticised the coalition for blocking aid access, especially to north Yemen, which is held by the Houthi rebels battling the Saudi-led coalition. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies have made clear they view Iran as mainly responsible for the Yemen conflict, in which more than 10,000 people have been killed in the past two years.
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Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa also tweeted that Iran was the real danger to the region. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Saudi Arabia was blaming Tehran for the consequences of its own "wars of aggression".
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