Iran’s Red Crescent Ready to Aid Yemeni People
Iran’s Red Crescent Society (IRCS) Secretary General Mahmoud Mohammadi Nasab said that IRCS is willing to increase cooperation with the Red Cross to address deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and provide help to the poor people of the war-hit country.
Mohammadi Nasab made the remarks in his Sunday meeting with Vice-President of International Committee of the Red Cross Gilles Carbonnier in Tehran where he added that the body is ready to enhance cooperation with International Committee of the Red Cross on providing people of Yemen with humanitarian aid.
He expressed Iran’s full readiness to boost cooperation with the international body in its different programs across the region.
One of the issues that the region is heavily involved with is the humanitarian crisis in Yemen which has endangered the lives of 15 million civilians, he said, adding, “It is expected that with the cooperation of the committee, we can play a bigger role in helping the Yemeni people.”
“We are concerned that conservative behaviors will reduce the effectiveness of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen,” the Iranian official highlighted.
Carbonnier, for his part, said that Iran has always implemented effective programs in the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
The committee has been after cooperating with regional societies to aid victims of wars but the issue of security is so important, he said, adding that the committee has always behaved in such a way so that both parties of any war would accept its humanitarian supports.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is after enhancing its presence in Yemen with providing medical services as well as food and water, he stressed.
Yemen is under a Saudi blockade which has put the impoverished nation on the brink of the worst humanitarian crisis in 100 years, according to the United Nations.
In August, a Saudi air raid hit a school bus as it drove through a market in the town of Dhahyan in Sa’ada Province in Northwestern Yemen, killing a total of 51 people, among them 40 children, and injuring 79 others, mostly children.
Saudi Arabia and some of its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan, launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
The aggression initially consisted of a bombing campaign but was later coupled with a naval blockade and the deployment of ground forces to Yemen. Around 20,000 people have died since the war began, says Yemen’s Health Ministry.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The United Nations (UN) has said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.
Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.
According to several reports, the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen has driven the impoverished country towards humanitarian disaster, as Saudi Arabia’s deadly campaign prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country.