Yemen

ADEN (Reuters) - Southern separatists have seized control of Yemen’s island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea, deposing its governor and driving out forces of the Saudi-backed government which condemned the action as coup.

The Southern Transitional Council (STC) declared self rule in the south in April, complicating U.N. efforts to forge a permanent ceasefire in a war that has separatists and the government fighting as nominal allies in a Saudi-led coalition against the Houthi group, who control the north.

(AP) --- The last of three large shipments of medical supplies landed in Yemen on Friday, organizers of the cargo flights said, following a joint initiative by the world organization and multinational corporations to boost the war-devastated country’s health care system as it battles the coronavirus.

14 June 2020; MEMO: “Five years of fighting had caused Yemen’s healthcare system to collapse in large parts,” confirmed Claire HaDuong, Medecins Sans Frontieres’s head of mission in Yemen, adding: “Now COVID-19 has made that collapse complete.”

ADEN (Reuters) - Southern separatists in Yemen seized a consignment of billions of riyals intended for the central bank in Aden on Saturday, in a further attempt to wrench control from the Saudi-backed government since declaring self rule in the south in April.

Forces loyal to the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which declared self rule in Aden in April, commandeered the convoy bearing the cash as it left the port, the central bank said in a statement on Saturday, warning of “dangerous consequences”.

12 June 2020; MEMO: Some 32 doctors in Yemen have died as a result of the coronavirus, the Yemeni Physicians and Pharmacists Syndicate announced yesterday.

Doctor Mohammed Ahmed Seif was the latest fatality, he died in the southern province of Taiz.

“Seif is the 32nd martyr from coronavirus,” the syndicate said in a statement.

09 June 2020; MEMO: The Yemeni army carried out an attack on sites belonging to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) on the outskirts of the city of Zanzibar, the capital of Abyan Governorate, south of Yemen, and seized Emirati weapons.

A video recording showed commander of the Special Security Forces, Colonel Muhammad Al-Auban, standing next to one of the thermal rockets that were seized from the Security Belt camp on the outskirts of Zanzibar.

SANAA, June 8 (NNN-XINHUA) – Billions of desert locusts are swarming through war-torn Yemen, threatening crops and exacerbating the food crisis.

They were seen invading cultivation areas in several provinces, including Dhamar, Bayda, Ibb, Dhalea, Mahweet and Hajjah, according to local residents and farmers.

The rainy season and the shortage of pesticides, due to the war, have left the swarms of migratory locusts out of control.

03 June 2020; MEMO: International donors raised $1.35 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen on Tuesday but the amount fell short of the United Nations’ target of $2.4 billion needed to save the world’s biggest aid operation from severe cutbacks.

28 May 2020; MEMO: Yemeni Minister of Defence, Mohammad Ali Al-Maqdashi, and Chief of Staff, Sagheer Bin Aziz, yesterday survived a ballistic missile attack in Marib governorate, Anadolu reported.

The news site quoted a military source as saying that the ballistic missile targeted the Sahn Al-Jin military camp, three kilometres north of the city of Marib, which is used by the Yemeni Ministry of Defence and the Army as their temporary headquarters.

22 May 2020; MEMO: Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations (UN) office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, announced in a statement in Geneva that: “Relief organisations in Yemen are operating on the basis that there is an outbreak throughout the country.”