Yemen’s president has sacked a governor who was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for his ties with Al-Qaeda.
The presidential decree by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was issued on Sunday. Hadi removed the governor of the central province of Al-Bayda, Nayef Al-Qaysi, and named Salah Al-Rassass as his replacement.
Bayda is a known Al-Qaeda hotbed, and where the US had carried out airstrikes and raids in the past years hunting the group’s operatives.
Al-Qaysi was classified by the US as a “specially designated global terrorist” over allegations that he financed the group.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen affiliate is known, has long been seen as the global network’s most dangerous branch, and has been implicated in a number of attempted attacks on the US homeland.
Separately on Monday, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), made a rare visit to the front lines in Yemen, taking a road to reach the besieged western of Taiz.
The visit by Peter Maurer aims to provide the ICRC with a firsthand look at Yemen’s raging cholera epidemic and the humanitarian disaster 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 the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are also in Yemen to urge for 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 UN.
Hundreds of thousands of Taiz residents have been caught across fire and residents use donkeys to carry smuggled goods and basic necessities on unpaved roads in and out of the city.
Since April, a cholera epidemic has ravaged the country with around 400,000 suspected cases and over 1,800 deaths. The rainy season underway threatens to worsen the situation and the numbers of cholera cases are expected to double by the end of the year, according to ICRC

source:Arab News