Aid 'cannot keep up with Yemen war'

The humanitarian situation in Yemen is worsening and can only be improved with a resolution to the conflict in the country, the Head of Programmes at Doctors Without Borders UK has said.

Andre Perache, who has recently returned to the UK after serving two months as the aid organisation's head of mission in Yemen, described the worsening humanitarian situation in the Middle East's poorest country, where a conflict involving several different internal forces, and a Saudi-led air campaign, has been ongoing since March.

"The only thing that is going to help the situation is not the provision of more aid, it's really the conditions that are creating the crisis coming to a conclusion," Perache told al-Araby al-Jadeed.

"The aerial campaign still continues to affect people, the restrictions on importation continue to create difficulties, everything has become a challenge," he added. "The fighting on the ground is ongoing. Fighting is underway in all the major hotspots, that is not abating. The impact on the civilian population will only increase."

MSF works across the country, and has especially been active in some of the places hardest hit by the conflict, including Yemen's second-city Aden, where street battles have raged since March 19, and have been able to help internally-displaced people from the northern Sadah province, the heartland of the Houthi movement currently fighting across the country, which has been particularly hard hit by airstrikes.

MSF have been able to bring in a limited amount of aid by boat to Aden and by air to Sanaa, despite the difficulty in accessing the country, as a result of the blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, and the fighting in Aden between the Houthis and allied forces loyal to Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh on one side, and local forces pitted against them on the other.