DUBAÏ, United Arab Emirates — The
UN is launching a
crowd-funding campaign for an operation intended to prevent an ageing Yemeni
oil tanker from unleashing a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, a
senior official said Monday.
اضافة اعلان
"We hope to raise $5 million by the end
of June,"
David Gressly, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for the war-hit
country, told an online press briefing, adding it was an "ambitious"
target.
"Today I launched a @UN crowdfunding
campaign because we urgently need funds to start the emergency operation before
it is too late," he said in a subsequent Twitter post.
The decaying 45-year-old oil tanker FSO
Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the
rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was
plunged into civil war more than seven years ago.
It is in "imminent" danger of
breaking up, the United Nations warned last month.
An operation to transfer its 1.1 million
barrels of oil to a different vessel could begin next month, according to a
website for the crowd-funding campaign, which will begin accepting donations
Tuesday.
A UN pledging conference last month for the
oil-transfer operation fell far short of its $80 million target, bringing in
just $33 million.
On Sunday, neighboring
Saudi Arabia said it
would contribute $10 million.
A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in
Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa the previous year.
Environmentalists warn the cost of the
salvage operation is a pittance compared to the estimated $20 billion it would
cost to clean up a spill.
The Safer contains four times the amount of
oil that was spilled by the 1989
Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world's
worst ecological catastrophes, according to the UN.
The UN has said an oil spill could destroy
ecosystems, shut down the fishing industry and close the lifeline Hodeida port
for six months.
It has said the operation needs to be
completed by the end of September to avoid "turbulent winds" that
pick up later in the year.
The war in Yemen has killed hundreds of
thousands of people and left millions on the brink of famine.
But fighting has reduced since April when a
truce went into effect, with the truce currently due to last until
August.
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