Photo: REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad
Cholera has killed at least 180 people in Yemen in recent weeks, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday, a day after authorities declared a state of emergency in the capital Sanaa and called for international help, Reuters reports.
Sanaa is controlled by the armed Houthi movement, which is aligned with Iran and fighting a Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition. More than 10,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in more than two years of war, which has also destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.
Only a few medical facilities are still functioning and two-thirds of the population are without access to safe drinking water, the United Nations has said.
Dominik Stillhart of the ICRC told reporters in the port city of Aden that at least 180 people had died from the acute diarrhoeal disease since April 27, and that 11,000 more suspected cholera cases had been reported across the impoverished country.
Houthi authorities have said 115 of those who have died were in the city of Sanaa and its province.
According to the data of the Armenian Embassy in Egypt, there are no Armenian nationals in cholera-hit Yemen, Spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tigran Balayan said in a Twitter post.
