Risk of oil spill in Yemen: UN mission confirmed by Houthis

Yemen's Houthi rebels have confirmed they have given the green light for a UN mission to inspect and repair a long-abandoned tanker that could cause a colossal oil spill off the poor Arabian Peninsula country.

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On Tuesday, the UN announced that the Houthis, who control much of the north of the country, had accepted a ship inspection mission and initial maintenance in the face of the risk of an oil spill, while Yemeni rebels had so far denied all access to the vessel.

"

," senior rebel official Mohammed Ali al-Houthi said in a tweet on Wednesday evening. .

45 years old and containing 1.1 million barrels of crude, the FSO Safer has been anchored since 2015 off the port of Hodeida (west), some sixty km from the first inhabited areas in the country at war since 2014. The The conflict is between government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, and Houthi rebels, backed by Iran.

It plunged Yemen into the world's worst humanitarian crisis according to the UN.

An oil spill could affect riparian countries, including Djibouti, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia, as well as commercial maritime traffic in the Red Sea.

An oil spill could destroy ecosystems there, shut down the vital port of Hodeida for six months and expose more than 8.4 million people to high levels of pollutants, according to independent studies.

The environmental NGO Greenpeace welcomed the agreement.

“

” said spokesperson Ahmed El Droubi.

Read also: Yemen: the UN Secretary General warns of the risk of famine