Good news and bad news from the war in Yemen. A truce between the (British-armed) Saudi-led coalition and their Houthi opponents broke down on 2 October – but the country has not returned to full-scale war.
More aid has been able to get into Yemen – but a top UN humanitarian official said on 22 November that 17 million people in the country ‘still do not know where they will get their next meal’.
The UN did raise enough money to stabilise the FSO Safer, the abandoned oil tanker just outside the crucial port of Hodeidah (and work will begin soon on that) – but another $38m is needed to buy another tanker and transfer the FSO Safer’s 1mn barrels of oil to it.
It seems that the Houthis want to renew the truce, but they want a better deal, with payments for civil servants and retired soldiers in areas they control. To get this better deal, they have been carrying out drone attacks near tankers and oil terminals in coalition-controlled areas to end their access to oil.
This bombing was described to Reuters as ‘a pressure tool’ by analyst Maysaa Shuja Al-Deen.