Amid airstrikes, UN cancels humanitarian flights in and out of Yemen's Sanaa airport

In a major development, the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) cancelled all the incoming and outgoing flights into Yemen's Sanaa airport, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), reported Xinhua. This comes after the Saudi-led coalition launched an air attack against a military camp in the rebel-held Yemeni capital of Sanaa. According to OCHA, the civil aviation authorities in Sanaa ordered the cancellation of all humanitarian flights into and out of the airport on Sunday.

As per a report published in Xinhua, OCHA stated that after examining the damage caused by the airstrikes, the UN is looking for ways to move supplies and staff into and out of Sanaa, adding that "UNHAS is a vital link for the movement of aid workers and the delivery of humanitarian supplies into Yemen. As we reported earlier in the week, a UN team visited the airport on December 21 to assess the damage caused by airstrikes the night before and noted that it remained operational for emergency humanitarian use. The UN is exploring alternatives to move supplies and staff into and out of Sanaa".

In the last open week, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have barred at least two UN humanitarian planes from landing at the Sanaa airport scheduled in the coming days. In the past month, the tension between Iran-backed-Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia-backed forces has escalated, resulting in cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia led by rebels. "We continue to call on all parties to the conflict to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law and to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects throughout military operations as well as to preserve the civilian character of public infrastructure," said OCHA.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has also called for the airport to be fully operational for civilian and commercial flights and reiterated its call for the seaport of Hodeidah to be open.

Yemen crisis

Yemen's war began after Houthis and allied armed forces took control of Sana'a and other parts of the country in 2014. It forced the former President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to ask Saudi Arabia to intervene against the Iranian-backed Houthis. In 2015, the Saudi-led coalition entered the war and launched an operation to end the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. Over the years, the conflict in the region has escalated and become a regional proxy war that has killed thousands of civilians and fighters and pushed Yemen into extreme poverty and in states of humanitarian crisis.

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With Inputs from AP