Oxfam: 1,000 days of war bringing 'apocalypse' on Yemen
madaresharghi Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and an “apocalypse,” aid agency Oxfam said in a report Wednesday marking 1,000 days since Saudi Arabia and its regional allies began a military campaign against the poorest country in the Middle East. “For 1,000 days, huge amounts of sophisticated modern weapons have pounded Yemen, and […]
Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and an “apocalypse,” aid agency Oxfam said in a report Wednesday marking 1,000 days since Saudi Arabia and its regional allies began a military campaign against the poorest country in the Middle East.
“For 1,000 days, huge amounts of sophisticated modern weapons have pounded Yemen, and on top of that we are now witnessing a medieval siege where mass starvation is being used as a weapon of war,” Mark Goldring, Oxfam chief executive, said in a press release Wednesday, telesurtv.net reported.
“Cutting off vital food, fuel and medicine to a population is never justified and should never be tolerated. It is a tactic that is devoid of any sense of decency, any sense of morality and any sense of humanity.”
Yemen has also been under a complete blockade since November which has meant that the country has no access to “fuel, essential for moving food and other vital goods around the country, Oxfam said.
“The Ras Isa oil terminal, on Yemen’s west coast, has been closed since March 2017 following instructions from the Saudi-led coalition,” the organization added.
The British group added that one million people are suspected to have contracted cholera, a disease caused by contaminated water, in the world’s worst outbreak ever recorded.
“Western governments will be complicit of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis if they do not act now, as 1,000 days of war continue to push the country towards an apocalyptic situation,” the charity organization warned.
Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate the former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.
More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign more than two and a half years ago. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.