U.S. backing of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could be enabling the disaster.
By Robbie Gramer, Lara Seligman
July 4, 2018
A top U.N. diplomat is trying to broker a truce between warring factions in Yemen as aid groups and country experts warn of a brewing humanitarian catastrophe.
Martin Griffiths, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, is visiting in the capital of Sanaa to mediate between government forces and Houthi rebels, whose three-year war is seen as a proxy for a broader conflict between a U.S.-allied Arab coalition on one side and Iran on the other.
The United Arab Emirates, which backs Yemen’s government alongside Saudi Arabia, has sent forces to the Houthi-held city of Hodeida, whose port supplies the country with 70 percent of its humanitarian and commercial goods.
Aid groups fear that a battle there could make the port inaccessible to the rest of the country, where some 8.4 million people are on the brink of starvation and millions more rely on humanitarian aid.
