Targeting Red Sea Mills by US-Saudi Forces Exposes Lethal, Painful Strategies against Yemeni People

YemenExtra

M.A.

Reports from Hodeidah indicate that a fire at the Red Sea Mills, in the eastern outskirts of Hodeidah City, has damaged two silos on Friday, January 25th, caused by mortar shelling of the  US-Saudi forces. WFP currently has 51,000 metric tons of wheat stored at the Red Sea Mills, a quarter of its in-country wheat stock and enough to feed 3.7 million people for a month. WFP has been unable to access the Mills since September 2018 because of fighting. Stephen Anderson, WFP’s Country Director said, “We are very concerned that some of our wheat stocks at the Red Sea Mills have been damaged. WFP urgently needs to get access to the Red Sea Mills so we can assess the level of damage and begin transporting the unaffected wheat stocks to areas of Yemen where it is desperately needed.”

“The loss of this wheat comes at a terrible time,” said Ms. Lise Grande, Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen. “More than 20 million Yemenis, nearly 70 percent of the entire population, are hungry.” Red Sea Mills means bread for Yemeni citizens. They are the only mills operating in Yemen that feed millions. Targeting them is a collective punishment targeting all Yemeni citizens by starving. The targeting of the Red Sea Mills and grain silos in Hodeidah comes as a systematic economic war to starve the Yemeni people and destroy their vital, service and economic facilities. “The situation in Yemen is heart-breaking. A quarter of a million people are in a catastrophic condition, facing near starvation if assistance doesn’t get to them,” said Ms. Grande. “This is the first time we are seeing conditions like this. We need this wheat.”

The warring parties in Yemen agreed at UN-sponsored talks in December on a ceasefire and troop withdrawal from Hodeidah, the entry point for the bulk of Yemen’s commercial and aid imports. The truce has largely held but the US-Saudi forces continue to violate the ceasefire, ignoring UN resolutions and renouncing their obligations agreed on in Sweden. As the United Nations struggled to implement the troop withdrawal, a confidence-building step aimed at paving the way for political talks to end the almost four-year war.

The Yemeni Army and Popular Committees have started to redeploy from the port of the Red Sea city of Hodeidah on Saturday, December 29th, as a first step in the implementation of the agreement, to be followed by both sides pulling their forces out of three ports of Hudaydah, Salif and Rass Issa. On the other hand, the US-Saudi aggression has not shown any steps forward.

The Spokesman for the Armed Forces, General Yahya Saree, said that the aggression and its mercenaries insist on their position not to fulfill what they committed to in the Stockholm agreement. “The continuation of the aggression and its mercenaries in their intensive violations in Hodeidah and the unprecedented escalation in the other fronts are obvious and evidence of their unwillingness to cease fire and bring peace to Yemen,” Saree said. Saree confirmed that the artillery of Saudi-mercenaries bombed one of the silos of the Red Sea Mills, describing it as a “cowardly” act that reflects the extent of the hatred and indifference of the Saudi coalition forces with the citizens.

The aggression of the US-Saudi coalition on the Yemeni people is becoming more and more dangerous every day. The more their means of aggression fail, the more lethal and painful means are used against ordinary citizens. The killing of children, women and elderly is not enough. It is not enough to destroy the houses on the heads of its inhabitants, not enough to destroy the infrastructure, not enough the siege on the Yemeni people for more than three and a half years.

The hatred of the American-Saudi aggression against the Yemeni people is becoming more acute, to the point of lifting the economic siege and creating a new policy to starve the Yemeni people. Here, the leadership of the aggression is doing its best criminal means, which aims to kill and starve more than 25 million people. The Yemeni people will resist and fight until victory over the forces of the US-Saudi aggression, the lifting of international guardianship and the restoration of national sovereignty to ensure the Yemeni people’s freedom and independence in various spheres of life.

This post originally ran on Almasirah English