Finally Humanitarian Aid Arrives in Yemen

Desperately needed humanitarian aid has over the weekend, finally reached Yemen, where 20-million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance and where 400,000 children are at risk of dying from severe malnutrition.

According to reports by the BBC-News, which cited a tweet from UNICEF's representative in Yemen, Meritxell Relano; a United Nations(UN) flight carrying some 1.9 doses of vaccines, has touched down at Sanaa's airport after a three-week blockade of rebel-held areas by a Saudi coalition following a missile attack upon the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, on November 6.

Yemen has been decimated by war since 2015, when Saudi Arabia entered a conflict in Yemen on behalf of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, against Houthi rebels. Yemen has since descended into a proxy struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Saudi blockade of rebel-held areas in Yemen has exacerbated humanitarian conditions for millions of suffering Yemenis, including 400,000 starving innocent children - too young to understand or to fend for themselves in a fight for control of Yemen. Yemen is the poorest nation in the Middle East.

Humanitarian negotiations with the Saudi led coalition, which inflicted the recent blockade two days after Houthi rebels allegedly fired a missile that was intercepted, toward the Saudi capital, have resulted in the reopening of the Red Sea port of Hudaydah for urgent humanitarian aid and Sanaa's airport for UN relief flights, the BBC-News reported.

Though no ships have yet docked at Hudaydah, the UN flight of medicines has been joined by three other flights carrying vital UN aid-workers and relief staff of the International Red Cross.

Some 8,670 people have died since the conflict began in Yemen in 2015. Hopefully, with this recent humanitarian relief effort, more lives of Yemen's children could be saved. Eventually, the conflict must end to return Yemen to some degree of normalcy.