ADEN/GENEVA: Five people were killed and at least 40 missing on the Yemeni island of Socotra on Friday as Cyclone Mekunu pummelled the area before making its way to the Arabian Peninsula’s southern coast. The dead were four Yemenis and one Indian national, residents and medical sources said, while the missing included Yemenis, Indians and Sudanese. Among those missing were three local sailors lost when their ship capsized off the coast of the island. Yemen declared a state of emergency on Thursday for Socotra, which lies between southern Yemen and the Horn of Africa and is renowned for its unique animal and plant life.
Largely untouched by Yemen’s three-year-old war, it is under the control of the internationally-recognised government whose president, Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, is in exile. The storm flooded Socotra’s villages and capsized boats, leaving much of the island without access to communications. Mekunu was expected to weaken to a tropical storm before reaching southeastern Saudi Arabia on Saturday, according to the kingdom’s meteorological authority.
Yemen is already grappling with one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced three million others, triggered a cholera outbreak and pushed the impoverished country to the verge of starvation, according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, the United Nations aid chief urged the Saudi-led military coalition that controls Yemen’s ports to expedite imports of food and fuel supplies, warning that a further 10 million Yemenis could face starvation by year-end.
“I am particularly concerned about the recent decline of commercial food imports through the Red Sea ports,” Mark Lowcock, UN emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement read out to a Geneva briefing on Friday.
For several weeks at the end of last year, the Saudi coalition imposed a blockade on Yemeni ports which it said was to prevent Ansar Allah from importing weapons. This had a severe impact on Yemen, which traditionally imports 90 per cent of its food.
Under international pressure the coalition lifted the blockade, but tightened ship inspections. Lowcock said commercial food and fuel imports remained “well short of pre-blockade averages”. “If conditions do not improve, a further 10 million people will fall into this category by the end of the year,” he said.
Confidence among commercial shippers has eroded due to delays, “including as a result of inspections undertaken by the coalition after these vessels have been cleared by UNVIM,” Lowcock said, referring to a UN verification system. In a bid to speed up the delivery of aid to Yemen, the United Nations said last month it was beefing up its own inspections of ships. — Reuters
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