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It’s the second day of an assault on the port city of Hodeidah.
Millions of eyes were on Saudi Arabia Thursday morning as its team played the opening match against Russia in the World Cup.
Twitter was full of fans tweeting support for the two sides, commenting about the game, and sharing snarky memes based on an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin teasing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman after Russia scored the first goal in the match.
But while the crown prince laughed and joked with Putin in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, 2,800 miles away, Saudi-led forces were launching one of the largest attacks on Yemen since the war began in 2015.
And international monitors are warning that the assault could result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and create a humanitarian catastrophe that dwarfs anything we’ve seen so far.
Here’s why: The Saudi assault, which began Wednesday, is targeting the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, currently held by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. As much as 80 percent of the food, medicine, fuel, and other aid that enters the country comes in through the Hodeidah port.
Which means that not only are the estimated 250,000 people who live near the port at risk of losing their lives, but millions of others who depend on the aid funneled through the port will be also be endangered.
“It is the lifeline of the country,” Lise Grande, the top United Nations humanitarian official in Yemen, told the Washington Post. “If you cut that port off, we have a catastrophe on our hands.”
Yemen was already in bad shape before the assault started
The three-year war has ravaged Yemen, which was already one of the poorest countries in the region.
The numbers are staggering: 10,000 people have died since the conflict began; 2 million have been displaced. The country is suffering from the worst cholera outbreak ever recorded in the history of the world. And more than 8 million people are at risk of starving to death.
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