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  • Red Cross chief visits besieged city on Yemen’s front lines | Lexington Herald Leader
    http://www.kentucky.com/living/health-and-medicine/article163246203.html

    The chief of the international Red Cross made a rare visit to the front lines in #Yemen Monday, taking a dirt road to reach the besieged western city of Taiz, devastated by more than two years of fighting.

    The visit by Peter Maurer, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, is meant to provide the ICRC with a firsthand look at Yemen’s raging #cholera epidemic and humanitarian crisis amid the civil war. Maurer already visited the southern port city of Aden and will be ending his trip in Sanaa.

    The executive directors of UNICEF and WHO are also in Yemen to urge for much-needed humanitarian aid. The $2.1 billion humanitarian appeal for Yemen is only 33 percent funded, and the response to the cholera epidemic requires an additional $250 million, of which just $47 million has been received, according to the United Nations.

    Maurer posted a video showing him driving on unpaved roads to Taiz and tweeted: “The city is encircled and main roads are cut off.

    I find this needless suffering absolutely infuriating. The world is sleep-walking into yet more tragedy,” Maurer said on Sunday.

    #CICR