Houthi militias have looted more than 127 tons of humanitarian aid from the World Food Program (WFP) in the border governorate of Hajjah, northwestern Yemen. The UN agency said in a press statement that an armed group stormed one of the WFPs stores in Hajjah on Sunday and took 127.5 tons of food aid. The UN program denounced these interventions against humanitarian operations in Yemen and demanded that the parties allow it to provide the necessary food assistance to families in need, in accordance with international humanitarian principles. For his part, Yemeni Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hadrami condemned the theft and wondered why the international community remains silent despite all these violations. He held the militias full responsibility for the collapse of the peace process. Hadrami’s statements came during his meeting in Riyadh on Tuesday with Swedish Envoy to the Middle East and North Africa Peter Semneby. The Yemeni government says its difficult to talk about holding a next round of consultations, Hadrami noted, in light of the continuous dangerous escalation by the militias and their rejection to implement Stockholm agreement. “The government was and is still keen to reach peace and has made many concessions to support the efforts of the UN envoy, especially when it comes to the implementation of Hodeidah agreement,” he stressed. The FM also pointed out that this was met with unjustified escalation and ongoing violations and intentional intransigence by the militias. He accused Houthis of hindering the redeployment in Hodeidah and imposing restrictions on the movement of the United Nations Mission in Support of the Hodeidah Agreement (UNMHA). He said they also prevented the access of the UN team to Safir offshore oil platform, which floats off Hodeidah’s northern coast, and imposed taxes on humanitarian projects to finance their wars. Minister of Local Administration and Higher Committee for Relief (HRC) Chairman Abdul Raqib Fatah has earlier stated that the militias looted around 440 trucks of food, medicines, and fuel in the period extending from Stockholm Agreements signing on Dec. 23, 2018 till the end of Dec. in 2019. In his statements, Fatah noted that the militias plundered medical aid for infantile paralysis and swine influenza in several provinces – then, they sold it to private hospitals for costly prices. They also looted YER600 million (USD1 equals to YER600) belonging to WFP, given that this amount was allocated for infantile paralysis. The minister added that the insurgents’ violations extended to the relief organizations staff, in which they banned 120 employees from accessing one of the WFP stores in Hodeidah. The store contains 51,000 tonnes of aid that is sufficient for more than 3.7 million individuals for more than eight months. Those warehouses were even shelled, leading to the damage of a great part. He also accused the militias of detaining 20 employees of the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) and banning them from implementing the relief projects. The militias also prohibited them from leaving Bani Qais and confiscated their passports for more than a week.
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