People search for survivors under the rubble of the collapsed house of Yemen’s late prime minister Faraj Bin Ghanim after it was hit by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa yesterday. Saudi-led air strikes killed eight people yesterday in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, residents and a news agency reported, the first such attacks after a lull of several days.

Agencies/United Nations


The UN has alerted aid groups to be prepared for a possible humanitarian pause in fighting in Yemen, starting as early as today, that would allow them to deliver assistance to some of the 21mn people in need.
A Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab states has been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement since late March in a bid to restore to power Yemen’s elected president, who is backed by neighbouring Saudi Arabia and has fled to Riyadh.
A senior UN aid official in Yemen wrote in an e-mail to aid groups that UN chief Ban Ki-moon “is calling for the pause to start as soon as this Friday, 3 July.” UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed is currently in Jeddah to meet with Saudi officials, the UN said.
Yemen relies on imports but a near total blockade led by Saudi Arabia has slowed shipments to the war-torn Arabian Peninsula country to a trickle. The Arab coalition is inspecting shipments in a bid to thwart any arms deliveries to the Houthis.
“The Secretary-General is doing all he can to advocate for a humanitarian pause during Ramadan, to allow humanitarian actors to scale up their efforts in providing much needed assistance across the country,” the official wrote.
The UN on Wednesday raised Yemen to its highest level humanitarian crisis, placing it alongside emergencies in South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. More than 80% of Yemenis need help in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.
“The pause will hopefully be an opportunity to provide essential services and pre-position and distribute critical humanitarian supplies that are currently in country and in our pipelines,” the UN official wrote in the e-mail.
Ban said in a statement released late Wednesday that some 3,000 people had been killed in the past three months, half of them civilians, and more than 14,000 injured. Outbreaks of dengue fever and malaria were also raging unchecked, he said.
Nationwide fuel shortages have spread disease and suffering in arid Yemen, where access to water usually depends on fuel-powered pumps, the UN has said. Hospitals are also struggling to operate without fuel.
Meanwhile, at least 22 people were killed yesterday as fighting raged in the southern port of Aden and Saudi-led warplanes bombed Shia rebels in Sanaa, officials said.
The clashes in Aden erupted at dawn in northern part of the port city, killing seven rebels and five pro-government fighters, a military official said.
Two civilians were also killed in rebel shelling of a western district that also damaged several homes, residents said.
A port near the oil refinery came under rebel artillery fire for a fifth consecutive day, as a fire continued in the area, said Aden Refinery Co spokesman Naser al-Shayef.
A car bomb exploded near a mosque in the downtown area of the Yemeni capital yesterday, wounding two people, police said.
The bomb went off close to the central bank after evening prayers, when the road was largely empty of passers-by, a police source said.

Yemen World Heritage sites on endangered list


The UN cultural agency yesterday placed two ancient cities in conflict-torn Yemen, Sana’a and Shibam, on its list of endangered World Heritage sites.
Unesco said Sana’a, known for its many Islamic sites and multi-storey rammed earth houses, “sustained serious damage due to armed conflict” between Iran-backed rebels and the Saudi-supported government.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation said the Qasimi neighbourhood near the urban garden of Miqshamat Al Qasimi had sustained “particularly serious damage”.
Unesco is meeting through July 8 in the northwest city of Bonn where it will consider at least 36 natural and cultural sites vying to get World Heritage status.
The 12th century al-Mahdi Mosque has also been affected and “the majority of the colourful, decorated doors and window panes characteristic of the city’s domestic architecture have been shattered or damaged”, it said.
The old city of Sana’a has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years and was a major centre for the propagation of Islam, boasting more than 100 mosques, 14 public baths and more than 6,000 houses built before the 11th century.
Unesco’s World Heritage Committee also decided that the old walled city of Shibam was “under potential threat from the armed conflict”.
The fighting “compounds safeguarding and management problems already observed”, it said as it added the 16th century city to its List of World Heritage in Danger.
Shibam’s tower-like structures rise up from a cliff and have given the city the nickname of the “Manhattan of the desert”.



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