UAE sends 17 boatloads of aid to Mukalla

Emirates Red Crescent has already sent airlift of medical supplies in effort to assist liberated city.

The first aircraft carrying UAE aid for the people of Mukalla landed at Al Riyan airport on May 8, 2016 with 20 tonnes of medicines and medical supplies from the Emirates Red Crescent. Wam

Aden // The Emirates Red Crescent has sent 17 boatloads of humanitarian aid to Mukalla, a regional official said, as the UAE steps up assistance to the Yemeni city recently liberated from Al Qaeda.

“Seventeen steamers carrying food, medicines, generators and ambulances will arrive at Mukalla port over the coming days,” said Ahmed bin Braik, the governor of Hadramawt province, of which Mukalla is the capital.

A plane carrying 20 tonnes of medicines and medical supplies from the ERC arrived at Mukalla’s Al Riyan airport on Sunday, the first flight to land there since Al Qaeda seized control of the city last April.

Dr Riad Al Jareeri, director of the Hadramawt health office, said the aid would be distributed among the province’s hospitals and health centres.

Mr bin Braik said more medicines as well as equipment for Al Mukalla Radio were expected soon from the ERC.

The state-run radio station was destroyed by Al Qaeda militants after they took Mukalla.

“The ERC also distributed more than 20,000 food baskets in Hadramawt last week,” Mr bin Braik said.

He thanked the ERC for its aid work following the liberation of Mukalla.

“Conditions in Mukalla have started to improve, and there are great efforts by the coalition countries, especially the UAE, to restore normal life to the city,” he said.

The director of Mukalla’s airport, Anis Abdel Kader, said on Sunday that the UAE was helping to make the airport fully operational so that commercial flights could resume.

Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, seen as one of the most powerful branches of the extremist group, took over Mukalla and made it the centre of a rich mini-state along the Arabian Sea coastline.

Exploiting the chaos of a civil war between government loyalists and Houthi rebels, Al Qaeda earned an estimated $2 million (Dh7.35m) a day in revenue from port taxes and fuel smuggling in the city of about 500,000.

Around 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla in the last week of April, forcing the militants out of the city and retaking control of its port and airport.

* With reporting from Wam and Reuters