Notes

The difficulty getting food, fuel and other relief items into Yemen, Laerke said, is because of extensive damage to the port city of Hudaydah.

“Before the war, Yemen was over 90 percent dependent on import of basic food items and medicines,” he said. “Eighty percent of those imports come through Hudaydah port. That gives you an indication of the importance of that lifeline.”

“What is particularly urgent in the port is the rehabilitation and the repair of five cranes, which were damaged in an airstrike in August 2015, so they have been partly out of commission for quite some time,” Laerke added.

Laerke said it was very difficult and slow to get shipments of goods in the port offloaded for further transportation with the cranes in need of repair.

Saudi Arabia, an ally of the Yemeni government, began intensive airstrikes against the Houthi rebels at the end of March 2015. Airstrikes by the Saudi Arabian coalition have caused massive damage to the country's infrastructure.