Officials from the Untied Nations delivered the first impartial confirmation to the degree of damage that has been done on Yemen’s Red Sea ports. The authorities assessed that less than a fourth of the port capacity are accessible expressing worry about the ability to transfer humanitarian goods to the inhabitants of Yemen.
“(The) impact of airstrikes on Hodeidah harbor, particularly in the last weeks, is very important,” Reuters writes Julien Harneis, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, addressed a U.N. conference in Geneva on Tuesday, January 21. Harneis did not attribute blame for the damage but said it would delay the operations to transfer food and gasoline to Yemen.
Reports from Yemen say there is around two months of wheat and gasoline stockpiles in the ports. UN personnel have been working with the local authorities aiming to preserve assistance and had a long-term plan to restore damage to the Red Sea ports which had been under the control of the Houthis for a decade. In about 2018, the UN did a detailed study of the port facilities and notes the lack of maintenance and concerns that needed to be solved.
In Hodeidah they are now reporting four of the port’s five tugboats were sunk and the fifth damaged. Local authorities believe the port’s capacity at Hodeidah, Salif, and at the Ras Issa oil terminal was decreased by 70 percent.
UN officials claimed the ports had been attacked four times in the preceding six months. U.S. operations concentrated on important assets during the long-running fight in the Red Sea area, while the Israel Defense Force launched two big raids in December.
The Israeli operations were in reaction to continuous missile and drone assaults undertaken by the Houthis. On December 19, there were there were a total of seven attacks against Hodeidah as well as one on Salif and two on the oil terminal. In addition, Israel launched four attacks on a power facility south of Sanaa and two on another power station north of Sanaa.
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The Houthi missile assaults continued and on December 26 the IDF launched a second round of strikes. That featured an estimated 25 Israeli Air Force jets and included the port of Hodeidah as well as the power plant and oil terminal. There was also substantial damage including the control tower, runways, and buildings at the Sanaa airport as well as further targeting of the power plant south of Sanaa.
Local authorities are stating a total of eight tugs vital to the port operations were destroyed.
“The civilian personnel that man them (the tugs) are clearly quite hesitant,” cautioned Harneis. “The capacity of the harbor is down to around a quarter,” he continued, claiming the port was utilized to transfer a substantial percentage of foreign supplies.
The Houthis continued to conduct missile assaults on Israel until January 18 and the declaration of the Gaza truce. They have nonetheless pledged to continue to target Israeli vessels and warned that broader assaults will commence if the agreement is breached.
Harneis told the UN briefing that the threat remained high for more assaults. He also claimed it was hindering UN mediation attempts to achieve a diplomatic settlement to the situation. The Houthi troops took the western provinces of Yemen in 2014 and early 2015.
