ADEN // More than 100 people were killed in 24 hours of fierce fighting between rebels and loyalist fighters in southern Yemen on Monday, as the Red Cross faced delays in delivering urgently needed aid.
Relief workers warned of a dire situation in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, where a Saudi-led coalition is waging an air war on Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels.
The United Nations children’s agency Unicef said on Monday the conflict was plunging Yemen towards humanitarian disaster, displacing tens of thousands of families and exposing many more to the threat of disease and malnutrition.
Most of the 114 deaths in the past 24 hours occurred in fighting between rebels and loyalists of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi in the main southern city of Aden.
Seventeen civilians were among the dead.
Witnesses said that clashes continued on Monday as rebels tried to seize a port in the city.
At least 19 Houthi rebels and 15 pro-Hadi militiamen were killed in fighting overnight in the town of Daleh, about 120 kilometres north of Aden, local officials said.
Seven more people were killed in clashes in the southern province of Abyan, where Hadi loyalists have besieged the base of a rebel army brigade loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is accused of backing the Houthis.
In nearby Lahj, coalition airstrikes hit the strategic Al Anad airbase and a nearby military camp, killing 10 rebels and forcing many others to flee, an army source said.
In Shabwa province, eight rebels were killed in an air raid as two others died in clashes with tribes, sources said.
Mr Hadi, who is backed by the United Nations as Yemen’s legitimate leader, took refuge in Aden in February after the rebels, who hail from the mountainous north, seized power in the capital Sanaa.
The president fled to Riyadh last month as rebels advanced on his southern stronghold, prompting the military campaign by the Saudi-led coalition.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has appealed for an immediate truce to facilitate aid deliveries and allow people to seek water, food and medical assistance.
Unicef and the Red Cross are both trying to fly aid shipments into Yemen on Tuesday to start addressing the dire conditions, but say they have struggled to get approval from the Saudi-led coalition and to find planes which will fly into the conflict zone.
“We have a cargo plane with medical supplies which is ready to go,” said Sitara Jabeen, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Geneva.
“We have the permission for this plane but we have logistical problems for the landing. There are less and less planes landing in Yemen,” she said.
The Red Cross is also trying to deploy a team of surgeons to Aden, but is still awaiting authorisations from all sides in the fighting.
It has called for all land, air and sea routes to be immediately opened to allow the delivery of 48 tonnes of medical supplies and surgical kits the organisation has ready to treat the 2,000 to 3,000 people who have been wounded in the fighting.
Unicef’s Yemen representative Julien Harneis said “many, many children” had been killed in the fighting. Hospitals have been shelled and schools taken over by combatants.
The aid agency said at least 62 children were killed in the last week of March in Yemen, and the figure was likely now to be “much, much worse”, Mr Harneis said.
This could in part be due to the large number of children fighting in the ranks of Yemen’s many armed factions.
Mr Harneis said child recruitment was widespread. “All of those more tribal type groups ... up to a third of them are children.”
Fuel shortages also threaten to disrupt child immunisation programmes - which need vaccines to be kept refrigerated - and government cash handouts to the poorest third of the population have been suspended.
At the same time the cost of water has risen, as generators pumping the water become more expensive to run, and prices of increasingly scarce food have gone up as people’s incomes fall.
The huge displacement of people, with families fleeing the worst-hit cities, also means deteriorating hygiene and sanitation conditions and possible spread of disease.
“We are rushing to a humanitarian disaster,” Mr Harneis said.
A witness at Sanaa airport reported that three Indian aircraft and one Russian plane landed in the capital on Monday to evacuate their citizens.
Jordan has evacuated almost 300 nationals from conflict-hit Yemen, the foreign ministry said on Monday.
Last week China evacuated 225 people from 10 different countries as well as 449 Chinese citizens, in two separate operations.
Saudi Arabia has assembled a coalition of Gulf monarchies – the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain – together with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan to wage air raids on the Houthis.
Iran has strongly criticised the intervention in Yemen by the coalition of largely Sunni nations, accusing Saudi Arabia of sowing instability with its air campaign.
Tehran has rejected accusations of arming the Houthis.
Yemen, strategically located near key shipping routes and bordering Saudi Arabia, is sinking deeper into sectarian conflict.
The fighting has drawn in an array of armed groups including the Houthis, pro-Hadi militia, army units loyal to Mr Saleh, southern separatists, Sunni tribes and Al Qaeda militants.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters
