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Yemen experiencing toughest petroleum products crisis since Saudi aggression: YPC

This picture shows Yemen's Red Sea port of Hudaydah. (Via AFP)

A spokesman for the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) says the Arab country is experiencing the toughest petroleum products crisis since the start of the Saudi aggression and siege nearly seven year ago.

The queues of cars waiting for fuel are “stretching more than three kilometers in front of [petrol] stations in various provinces” across the country, Essam al-Mutawakel told Yemen's al-Masirah television network on Wednesday.

He noted that the crisis could be resolved, if fuel ships were not blocked from entering Yemen via Hudaydah port.

Despite having undergone inspection and received UN clearance, the Yemen-bound fuel ships are being seized by the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen and are transferred to Saudi Arabia’s Jizan port, al-Mutawakel explained.

“We always wonder about the benefit of granting the oil tankers UN permits, and [at the same time] the justifications of the acts of piracy committed by the aggression’s coalition against them in international waters,” he said.

Earlier in the day, the YPC said the Saudi-led coalition banned a fuel ship, which had received UN clearance, from entering Hudaydah port.

Yemen’s Minister of Oil and Minerals Ahmad Abdullah Dares has warned that the Saudi seizure of ships carrying petroleum products could lead to the suspension of the service sectors and cause “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies -- including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015.

The war was launched to eliminate Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The war, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals, but it has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people.

As part of its economic war, the Saudi-led coalition has imposed an economic siege on Yemen, preventing fuel shipments from reaching the country, while looting the impoverished nation’s resources.

The UN says more than 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger. The world body also refers to the situation in Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories.


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