Hundreds of thousands of civilian lives "hang in the balance" in Yemen's Hodeida province, where families are living in fear of shelling and air strikes, the UN said Thursday. "The situation has dramatically deteriorated in the past few days... people are struggling to survive", said the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Lise Grande, in a statement.
Doctors and medics in two hospitals in Hodeida province said 50 people have been killed in the past 24 hours, seven of them pro-government fighters. The UN's attempts to broker peace talks between Huthi Shiite rebels and Yemen's Saudi-backed government collapsed on Saturday.
Fighting has raged in the last two days close to the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, a crucial entry point for humanitarian aid that the Saudi-led coalition alleges also serves as a key conduit for arms to the Iran-backed Huthis. Alongside the threat of combat, civilians also face severe shortages of food, water and medicine in Hodeida province, Grande said.
More than a quarter of children are malnourished, 900,000 people are desperate for food and 90,000 pregnant women "are at enormous risk," she said. The situation would be exacerbated if the fighting compromises mills and stores in Hodeida province. "We're particularly worried about the Red Sea mill, which currently has 45,000 metric tonnes of food inside, enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month," Grande said.