Fire breaks out at World Food Program warehouses in Yemen

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Updated 10:05 am, Saturday, March 31, 2018

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A massive fire broke out on Saturday and engulfed storage facilities belonging to the World Food Program in the Yemeni Red Sea port city of Hodeida damaging humanitarian aid inside, Yemen's official news agency said.

Yemen's minister of local administration, Abdel-Raqeeb Fatah, was quoted by SABA news agency as saying that the fire destroyed much-needed aid deliveries inside the facilities and called for an investigation.

The port of Hodeida, under the control of Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, is vital lifeline for most of Yemen's population, which depends on the port for food and medicine.

. . .

The three-year stalemated war has damaged Yemen's infrastructure, crippled its health system and pushed it to the brink of famine. The country is now the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance. Malnutrition, cholera and other diseases have killed or sickened thousands of civilians over the years.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Report-Fire-at-World-Food-Program-s-warehouse-in-12795845.php

[Skittles]

1. this is horrible

[irisblue]

2. Those poor people.

[Fred Sanders]

3. No mention of the role of the murderous dictatorship of Saud?

[Igel]

4. I don't know what I'm reading.

There are two sides in this part of the country. One side is the rebels, who control that port and Aden. The other is the vestiges of the former government before the civil war.

Both sides are well motivated to smuggle in arms. In fact, if the Houthis are getting arms--and we know they are--it's almost certainly through this port. But they also need supplies for their troops--which hardly counts as "humanitarian" assistance. And supplies for the population, because Yemen is a country whose population, if cut off from the world, wouldn't be able to feed itself except maybe in years with the most exceptional of bumper crops.

So I'm not ruling out that a shipment of something illegal and flammable caught fire, or that it was necessary to damage and dispose of all kinds of stuff officially in order to provide cover for shunting the material to fighters. Nor that it actually held aid going to civilian populations without regard for whether they've provided fighters.


Of course, it's always possible it was an accident. Things like that do actually happen from time to time, whether because wiring or open flame accidentally causes a fire.


And, lastly, it's possible that the other side in the insurgency did take measures to destroy the warehouse, either because they knew or suspected munitions and fighter supplies were in it, or because they just want to hurt the population in the territory they want to control.

The news agency and presumably the minister being cited are part of the Houthi-controlled government. They very much have a dog in this fight, both in making their enemy look bad and making themselves look good. Given this, the minister's statement is the only statement he'd plausibly make in *any* of the conditions mentioned above, so there's no way to ascertain its truth value.