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Yemen’s lifeline Hodeida port stifled under ‘de facto’ blockade

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DUBAI: Yemen’s rebel-held port of Hodeida, a lifeline for a war-battered country dependent on food imports, remains “a wasteland” three months after a Saudi-led coalition said it lifted a blockade.


The assessment by humanitarian and port officials comes as Saudi Arabia and its allies push into the fourth year of their military intervention in Yemen.


The operation, launched in March 2015 with the goal of rolling back Ansarullah fighters and restoring Yemen’s internationally-recognised government to power, has contributed to what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.


The UN Security Council warned on Thursday that conditions in Yemen are deteriorating and having a “devastating” impact on civilians, with 22.2 million now in need of humanitarian assistance.


The status of Hodeida, the country’s largest seaport and gateway to the majority of its aid-dependent population, offers a window into the nation’s dire plight.


In February, food imports were half of the monthly national requirement, according to the United Nations agency for humanitarian affairs.


The world body said those food shipments, critical to a nation on the verge of famine, were “the lowest” since the UN began inspecting cargo in May 2016.


The once-bustling port of Hodeida now receives a trickle of deliveries, with some ships entering only to remove empty containers and haul them away.


“Hodeida should be supporting more than 20 million Yemenis. It should be the source of at least 70 per cent of all imports to Yemen,” Suze van Meegen, a protection and advocacy adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council, said.


“Instead it’s like a wasteland.”


Van Meegen in late February visited the port for a firsthand view.


AFP requested permission from Hodeida port authorities to visit but has not yet been granted access.


“The most striking thing at the port is the destruction of the five gantry cranes,” Van Meegen said, referring to infrastructure bombed by coalition warplanes in the first six months of their intervention.


The old cranes are now obstacles to movement at the port, and the storage area where containers were once stacked four high is largely empty, she said.


Some 5,000 day labourers have been let go since the bombing of the cranes, according to port authorities.


Van Meegen said that four mobile US-purchased cranes delivered in January -- while welcomed by humanitarian groups -- do not have the same capability as the old ones.


“The cranes destroyed in 2015 could transport 30 containers each hour,” she said. “The four mobile cranes delivered by the US will help with offloading very small quantities of cargo.”


The truck-mounted cranes have an offloading capacity of 60 tonnes but cannot necessarily reach a large container ship, said Robert Foley, a US-licensed chief mate who has sailed on numerous container ships.


He said they are “much slower and more laborious than the traditional gantry crane”.


“If the ports lose their ability to operate the gantry cranes, it stops or slows down the rate of cargo operations,” Foley said. — AFP


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