SANAA, Yemen (AP) — An aid worker suffered mortal wounds when he was apparently caught in crossfire earlier this week in southern Yemen, an international charity said Wednesday.
The shooting took place Monday at a checkpoint when a vehicle carrying two workers for the humanitarian group Oxfam was travelling to the port city of Aden, the group said.
The workers and their driver, all Yemeni nationals, were wounded and taken to a hospital. One of the workers, Fathi al-Zurigi, died Tuesday, Oxfam said.
The shooting circumstances were unclear, but the group said there was no reason to believe its workers were targeted.
The other worker was discharged Wednesday while the driver was still in an intensive care unit, but his condition was stable, it said.
“It is a heart-wrenching sadness to lose a colleague, particularly in such terrible circumstances,” said Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam’s executive director. “Humanitarian workers across the world, like Fathi, risk their own lives every day.”
Humanitarian providers have faced numerous risks in war-torn Yemen, where millions of people depend on aid for survival.
Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war war since 2014, when Houthi rebels swept across much of the north and seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war the following year on the side of Hadi’s government
The stalemated war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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