Saudi-led Coalition Bombs Yemen's Hodeidah Port
By Aiswarya Lakshmi
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
The Yemen's Red Sea port of Hodeida was seriously damaged and closed after the airstrikes of the Arab Coalition against Houthi, reports Reuters.
Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition hit Yemen's Red Sea port of Hodeidah. The raids destroyed cranes and warehouses in the main entry point for aid supplies to the north of the country.
Hodeida, controlled by Iranian-allied Houthi forces, has become a focal point of efforts to resupply the impoverished Arab state, battered by five months of war that has killed over 4,300 people.
The port is main import hub for aid supplies to the country’s north, but most of the warehouses with humanitarian aid delivered by the United Nations were also completely damaged and burning.
Shiite Muslim Houthi rebels have been entrenched in Sana for nearly a year, and a struggle between heavily armed combatants within its confines would be expected to take a heavy civilian toll.
The shipping operations in Yemen are forbidden and cargo vessels should pass away from the territorial waters of the country, until further notice and end of the military conflict.
“Air strikes cause big damage to the port as a whole. They destroyed all five cranes and totally disabled the container terminal”, said the head of the national ports management on the Red Sea, Yahya Sharaf Abbas.
The human rights group Amnesty International meanwhile said the Saudi-led air campaign had left a "bloody trail of civilian death" which could amount to war crimes. An Amnesty report said it had investigated eight coalition air strikes in Yemen that killed 141 civilians, including children.