Workers unload aid from a plane at Sanaa International Airport in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 25, 2017. A total of four planes carrying aid workers and materials landed at Yemen's Sanaa Internatinal airport on Saturday, one day after the Saudi-led coalition granted permission to the UN bodies to resume flights. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed)
SANAA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A total of four United Nations planes carrying aid workers landed in Yemen's Sanaa airport on Saturday, one day after the Saudi-led coalition granted permission to the UN bodies to resume flights.
It was the first time that UN flights was granted access to the rebel-held capital, following more than two weeks of air, land and sea blockade imposed by the coalition after Saudi intercepted a ballistic missile fired towards its capital Riyadh from Yemen on Nov. 6.
Around a dozen of UN aid workers got off the planes and went to the reception hall of the destroyed airport terminal, before boarding vehicles heading to the UN offices in Sanaa.
The piecemeal reopening of one airport in the most humanitarian crisis-hit country is unlikely to ease the aggravating economic and health catastrophes.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemeni dominant Shiite Houthi rebels said on Wednesday it would allow access of humanitarian supply planes to Sanaa and ships carrying aid to the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.
However, the coalition's blockade has remained on Yemen's seaport of Hodeidah, which has cut off food, medicine and fuel imports to the Yemeni northern population where more than 7 million people are on the brink of famine.
Jens Laerke, spokesman of the UN humanitarian aid coordination agency OCHA, said on Friday that what really matters is that "we can get the ports in Hodeidah and Saleef open both for humanitarian aid and for commercial imports."
The coalition has been facing escalating criticisms from senior UN officials and humanitarian agencies who expressed mounting concerns over already worsening humanitarian catastrophes in the war-torn Arab country which largely depends on humanitarian aid supplies and food imports.
The coalition, which intervened in the Yemeni conflict on March 2015 to back the Sunni government of the Yemeni exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has said it is planning to give clearance to aid ships only, but has yet to say whether it will allow commercial imports to access the rebel-held sea ports.
OCHA said in its latest report on Thursday that Yemeni fuel importing companies "will not be able to supply local markets at the end of this week."
On Nov. 16, OCHA said the blocking of fuel imports would lead to the running out of petrol in local markets in 10 days. It added that few gas stations are currently open with very long queues of cars.
OCHA also warned of increased prices of trucked water by 133 percent in Sanaa.
"This will further increase the vulnerability of millions of Yemenis with limited access to clean water and threatens to reverse gains made in combating cholera," the UN aid agency OCHA added.
