Members of the Saudi-led coalition conducting air strikes in Yemen are preventing a Red Cross plane from delivering urgent medical supplies in Sanaa, an ICRC spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
In a statement, the independent aid agency "called for the urgent removal of obstacles to the delivery to Yemen of vital medical supplies needed to treat casualties from a week of deadly clashes and air strikes".
"We still don't have the permission from coalition members," ICRC spokeswoman Sitara Jabeen told Reuters in Geneva, declining to specify which coalition authorities were responsible for blocking the plane, which was still in Djibouti.
Meanwhile, a health ministry official stated that artillery fire on the Khor Maksar district of the southern Yemeni city of Aden killed 26 people overnight.
Iran-allied Houthi militiamen along with allied army units are pushing on the outskirts of the city, the last bastion of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, despite six days of Saudi-led air strikes meant to stem their advance.
Air raids by a Saudi-led coalition again hit Houthi militia targets across Yemen on Monday night, striking the group's northern stronghold of Saadeh, the capital, Sanaa, and the central town of Yarim, residents and media said.
"There were huge blazes in the mountains outside Sanaa. It looks like they hit a missile depot and it was on fire for half an hour or so. Then there was anti-aircraft fire until dawn," a Sanaa resident said.
The strikes, which began on Thursday, are aimed at stopping the Houthis from taking more territory and pressing them and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh to negotiate a power-sharing deal with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Shooting continued in Aden during the night, a Reuters reporter said. If the Houthis took the city, it would represent a significant defeat for the Saudi-led coalition, which has repeatedly said that there is a major objective in protecting the presence of Hadi's government.
An air strike on Monday killed at least 40 people at a camp for displaced people in northern Yemen, humanitarian workers said, in an attack apparently aimed at the Houthis.
POSITIONS
A Saudi-led alliance will pursue an offensive against Houthi forces opposed to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi until Yemen is stable, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said in remarks published on Tuesday.
"We are not the ones calling for war. But if you bang the drums of war, we are ready for it," the minister told the kingdom's Shura Council, according to the advisory body's Twitter feed.
The operation "will continue to defend legitimacy in Yemen until it achieves its aims, and Yemen is returned to security, stability and unity", he was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Tehran's deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said Iran wants all parties in Yemen to return to calm and dialogue, adding the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia could work together to solve the conflict there.
"Iran and Saudi Arabia can cooperate to solve the Yemeni crisis," Abdollahian told reporters in Kuwait, speaking through a translator. "We recommend all parties in Yemen return to calm and dialogue".
Asked whether Iran had any channels of communication with its regional rival, Abdollahian told Reuters: "We are trying". Abdollahian gave no details but, asked whether Tehran had a plan for resolving the war, he replied: "We have a proposal".
REUTERS