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UN envoy on Yemen presses on towards political solution with meetings in Cairo

Xinhua, August 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

The United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, met with officials in Cairo, capital of Egypt, as part of the ongoing efforts to reach a political solution to a conflict that has led to just more than 1, 900 civilian deaths since fighting erupted in March and caused almost 100,000 people to flee the country, a UN spokesman told reporters here Tuesday.

"Ould Cheikh Ahmed met with the secretary general of the League of Arab States, Nabil Elaraby, who was fully supportive of his efforts," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here. "And he also met with the senior officials of the General People's Congress party in his continuing efforts to push for a political solution."

"In the coming days, the special envoy plans to visit Oman and Riyadh to hold further discussions with Yemeni officials," Haq said.

Also on Tuesday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Tuesday that the civilian death toll in Yemen has risen to at least 1,916, with another 4,186 civilians wounded since the escalation of the armed conflict on March 26. Over the past few weeks, there have been two particularly devastating attacks in residential areas, the UN agency said.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners last week began food distributions to around 340,000 people in eight of the worst- affected areas of the port city of Aden. All of these districts -- except one -- had not been reached since April because of conflict.

While WFP continues to send assistance to Yemeni ports, including Aden, Saleef and Hodeidah, commercial food and fuel imports are urgently needed to meet the growing needs of hundreds of thousands of people.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday that almost 100,000 people have fled Yemen since conflict erupted there in late March but the agency's regional response to this outflow is just one fifth funded.

UNHCR requires 105.6 million U.S. dollars for its emergency response inside Yemen. It has only received about 23 percent of that.

Some 1.2 million internally displaced people and approximately 250,000 refugees continue to need assistance in extremely challenging conditions with severely restricted access, UNHCR noted. Endite