UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg on Thursday warned that Yemen faces a high risk of a return to large-scale conflict.
"Yemen today faces a more serious risk of return to large-scale conflict than at any point since the 2022 UN-mediated truce," Grundberg told the Security Council in a briefing via video link.
There has been an intensification of military activity along front lines, with recent attacks by the Houthis in Ma'rib, Hadramawt, Mokha and beyond, causing casualties among both military personnel and civilians, he said.
With regional trade and energy flows already under intense pressure from the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, renewed Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden risk deepening Yemen's entanglement with the wider regional confrontation, the envoy said.
Grundberg noted that tensions had already been mounting prior to those developments. In July, an unauthorized flight from the Iranian capital of Tehran toward Yemen's Sanaa was followed by airstrikes on Sanaa International Airport and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia's Abha airport and Saudi oil facilities.
"A return to large-scale fighting in Yemen now would come at an unforgiving moment: with Yemen's state institutions fragmented by over a decade of conflict, its economy left with little margin to absorb another shock, and the wider region engulfed by war," he said.
For Yemenis, renewed war would once again place every ordinary ambition to study, to work, to build a life, at the mercy of the fighting. It would mean a new generation sent to the front lines, instead of having the chance to reimagine and remake their country's future. For the Security Council and the wider international community, it would mean one more conflict reignited in a region already aflame, Grundberg warned. ■
