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IPFS News Link • Yemen

THE U.S. AMBASSADOR TO YEMEN'S HARD-LINE APPROACH IS JAMMING UP PEACE...

• https://theintercept.com, Alex Emmons

ONE NIGHT IN mid-August 2015, a fleet of warplanes circled over the Yemeni port city of Hodeida. Since that spring, a Saudi-led coalition had been carrying out a devastating bombing campaign. The United States had been helping the coalition with targeting, arguing that its precision guidance of airstrikes would mitigate civilian casualties.

But that night, the coalition raid leveled the port, destroying five massive cranes that were essential for unloading cargo ships. Clinging to the shore of the Red Sea, Hodeida is the entry point for nearly 80 percent of Yemen's imported food.

With the cranes gone, the flow of goods into the country slowed to a trickle, and the international community scrambled to fend off a famine. The U.S. government donated $3.9 million to the World Food Program to purchase new cranes, which took months to arrive. When they did, the Saudi-led coalition turned away the ship that was carrying them. As the famine accelerated, the cranes sailed back to Dubai. Aid organizations accused the coalition of pursuing a deliberate strategy of starvation, one that has led to the worst humanitarian crisis of the century.


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