Sanaa: A UN official warned Wednesday that up to half a million people could be displaced as conflict escalates and the humanitarian situation worsens in Yemen’s southwestern Taez province, mainly in Hodeida.
“Between 100,000 and half a million people could be displaced as the conflict and humanitarian situation continue to worsen,” said Shabia Mantoo, Yemen spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR.
“The humanitarian situation alone continues to worsen even without the conflict intensifying,” Mantoo said from the Red Sea city of Hodeida.
Fears of large-scale displacement are exacerbated by rampant food insecurity in Hodeida that the UNHCR says has reached critical levels.
Mantoo said more women and children were begging in the streets of Hodeida, where people displaced mainly from southwestern Mokha and the city of Taez have for two years sought refuge.
The United Nations estimates more than 7,700 people have been killed and millions displaced since a coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 against rebels in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh is open to negotiations with Saudi Arabia, two years into a deadly war between Saleh’s rebel allies and the Saudi-backed government. “We have no choice but dialogue,” Saleh said at a meeting of his General People’s Congress party in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday. — Agencies
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