U.N. Warns That Grain to Feed Millions Could Rot

The top United Nations relief official said Thursday that grain to feed 3.7 million Yemenis is stranded and possibly rotting in warehouses in the front-line port city of Hudaydah, while nearly 10 million Yemenis verge on famine.

The fate of the grain supply has become a symbol of faltering international efforts to implement a limited truce in Hudaydah between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition, which was signed in December.

Distribution of the grain is a matter of life-or-death urgency for suffering Yemenis, in a war that began nearly four years ago and has become what the United Nations has called the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis.

Two out of three Yemenis do not know where their next meal will come from.

Mark Lowcock, the United Nations relief coordinator, said in a statement that the Houthis had refused permission to United Nations officials to reach the Red Sea Mills, where the World Food Program, the organization’s anti-hunger agency, has 51,000 tons of wheat in storage. That is a quarter of the agency’s stock in Yemen.