A UN report confirmed that relief warehouses in Yemen’s Hodeidah city were set ablaze by mortar shelling.
The report published by the UN official website revealed that the fire destroyed the two silos, but it was unable to ascertain the circumstances and blamed no party for the attack.
The legitimate government had blamed the Iran-backed Houthi militias for firing the mortar shells.
Majid Fadayel, Undersecretary of the Yemeni Human Rights Ministry, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the flagrant violation is not surprising and falls in line with the conduct of the terrorist militias that commit civilian abuses daily.
He said the crime “is collective punishment exercised against citizens who do not support their (Houthi) presence in the Red Sea port city,” labeling international silence as indirect support of militia activities and “encourages them to commit further violations.”
The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) supplies at the burned down facility represent a quarter of its grain stock in the country – enough to feed 3.7 million people for a month, an official statement said.
"The situation in Yemen is heartbreaking," said UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen Lise Grande, in the statement.
The UN food agency, for its part, called for safe access to the grain silos to assess the damage from the fire, according a statement from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Saturday.
"We are very concerned that some of our wheat stocks at the Red Sea Mills have been damaged," said WFP's Yemen director Stephen Anderson.
The WFP has been unable to access the site since September last year, due to fighting, the statement revealed.
"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," Anderson added.
"A quarter of a million people are in a catastrophic condition, facing near starvation if assistance doesn't get to them. We need this wheat."
Sources confirmed that militias targeted the silos moments after the first shelling to prevent civilians from removing any surviving supplies.
The second attack targeted paramedics treating those injured onsite.
Ali Naji, 30, who sustained an abdominal injury, died on arrival at al-Khokha hospital.
