The Red Cross on Saturday called for an immediate 24-hour ceasefire in battle-torn Yemen, saying many more people recently wounded in airstrikes and ground fighting will die if not tended to soon.
The call came just before the United Nations Security Council met late Saturday morning to discuss the situation in the Arabian Peninsula nation, where Shiite rebels are pitted against external Arab air forces and fighters loyal to Yemen’s displaced Sunni president.
A pause was needed especially in and near the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, where intense fighting has happened in the past two weeks, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. Food, water, and medical items and personnel need to get into these areas, the group said.
“Otherwise, put starkly, many more people will die. For the wounded, their chances of survival depend on action within hours, not days,” Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s head of operations in the Near and Middle East, said Saturday.
At the Security Council, diplomats discussed the situation in a closed-door meeting in the late morning and finished in the early afternoon. No decision was immediately announced.
Before the meeting, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations told reporters that Russia wanted a humanitarian pause in the fighting. Russia called the meeting for that purpose, Russian state news agency Sputnik reported.
Yemen has been descending into chaos in the weeks since Houthi rebels, minority Shiites who have long complained of being marginalized in the majority Sunni country, forced Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi from power in January.
The conflict prompted Saudi Arabia, a predominately Sunni nation and Yemen’s northern neighbor, to lead a nine-nation regional coalition in conducting airstrikes in Yemen, targeting the rebels.
The United Nations said at least 519 people have been killed in Yemen in the past two weeks. An additional 1,700 have been wounded. Tens of thousands have fled to nearby Somalia and Djibouti.
In Aden alone, fighting has killed 58 people and injured 200 more in the past two days, Yemeni security officials said. At least 24 of the dead were Houthis.
Complicating matters in Yemen is that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — not the Houthis or Hadi-loyal forces — holds sway in the country’s east. AQAP is considered one of the most ruthless branches of the terrorist organization.
The Houthis put Hadi under house arrest when they overtook the capital, Sanaa, in January. But Hadi escaped in February, fled to Aden and declared himself to still be president.
He fled Aden in March, ultimately for Saudi Arabia, when Houthi rebels and their military allies, including those loyal Hadi’s predecessor — launched their own airstrikes near his residence there and advanced on the city. The Houthis had taken control of Yemeni Air Force assets near Sanaa.
Also late this week, photos circulating on social media purported to show senior al Qaeda leader Khaled Batarfi — whom Yemeni defense officials said militants busted out of jail on Thursday — posing in a presidential residence in southern Yemen.
Sunni Islamist fighters freed Batarfi with some 270 prisoners when they overran the town of al Mukallah.