UN Says Gets Access to Vital Grain in Yemen’s Hudaydah

TEHRAN (defapress) – A United Nations team has regained access to grain in Yemen that could feed more than 3.7 million people for a month, in a country "gripped with the world's largest humanitarian crisis", UN officials say.

News ID: 77240

Date: 06 May 2019 - 10:38

The team reached the grain store on Sunday. It is in the Red Sea Mills silos just outside the port town of Hudaydah.

"We lost access to this mill in September of last year," Stephen Anderson, the World Food Program (WFP) Yemen country director told Al Jazeera from Djibouti.

"We managed to first gain access, despite repeated attempts in late February and at that time we could see that the grain was in an advanced stage of infestation," Anderson said.

An assessment at that time concluded that about 70 percent of the wheat may be salvageable. The WFP-led team is to begin work to save it.

The ongoing Saudi-led war on Yemen has caused the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with 24.1 million people - nearly 80 percent of the population - in need of humanitarian assistance, the UN said.

Tens of thousands have been killed, and the country is on the brink of famine.

It will likely take several weeks to mill what can be salvaged from the 51,000 tons of grain into flour and distribute it to the Yemeni communities most in need.

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