GENEVA — The United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, warned on Tuesday that Yemen was on the brink of collapse, as his office said that heavy fighting in the southern port city of Aden had left its streets lined with bodies and its hospitals full of corpses.
Fierce clashes erupted on Monday as Shiite Houthi rebels, who are allied with Iran, pressed on with an offensive in Aden against fighters loyal to President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the exiled Yemeni leader, who is backed by Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states.
“The situation in Yemen is extremely alarming, with dozens of civilians killed over the past four days,” Mr. al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement. “The country seems to be on the verge of total collapse.”
“The killing of so many innocent civilians is simply unacceptable,” he added.
Houthi forces were reported to have forced their way into Aden’s northeastern suburbs despite airstrikes by the Saudi Air Force and a naval blockade intended to sever the flow of weapons and other supplies to Houthi forces.
“There are lots of bodies in the streets,” said Cécile Pouilly, a spokeswoman in Geneva for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing reports from staff members in Aden, “it seems the hospitals are really full of dead people and full of injured.”
With movement around the city hampered by the fighting, it was not possible to estimate accurately the death toll in Aden, Ms. Pouilly said. She added that at least 93 civilians had been killed and 364 others had been wounded in fighting in the capital, Sana, and in four other locations since Friday.
Mr. al-Hussein said he was shocked by a Saudi airstrike on Al Mazraq, a camp in northern Yemen for people displaced by the conflict, which caused scores of civilian casualties.
The United Nations rights office said that its staff had confirmed that at least 19 people had been killed and that 35 others had been wounded in that strike, but it noted that there were different accounts of the number of dead. The International Organization for Migration, which had workers in the camp, reported that 40 people had been killed.
The United Nations rights office said an armored division of the Yemeni Army, together with Houthi forces, had attacked three hospitals in the southern city of Al Dhale, causing an unknown number of casualties. “We condemn all attacks on hospitals and call on all sides to protect civilians from harm,” the United Nations office said in a statement.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also expressed concern at the high number of civilian casualties, reporting that a Yemeni volunteer for the Red Crescent, Omar Ali Hassam, had been shot to death on Monday in the southern province of Al Dhale while evacuating wounded people.
“There are casualties across the country,” Cédric Schweizer, head of the Red Cross team in Yemen, said in a statement. “There have been airstrikes in the north, west and south, and clashes between opposing Yemeni armed groups in the center and south, that are putting immense strain on already weak medical services.”
The Red Cross said that it was trying to fly in medical supplies to replenish hospital stocks but that it had not been able to negotiate the safe arrival of the aircraft. The organization called for the urgent removal of obstacles to the delivery.
Hospitals, private homes, schools and civilian infrastructure have been hit in several locations, as have civilian airports and electricity generating stations in Sana, Saada and Al Hudaydah, the United Nations said, highlighting fears of the damage that would result from a threatened ground invasion by Saudi and other forces.
The fighting has forced hundreds of families to flee their homes, adding to the more than 334,000 people whom the United Nations refugee agency reported as displaced in the months of conflict before the recent upsurge in hostilities.
To escape the fighting, small numbers of Yemenis have started crossing the Red Sea to Somalia and Djibouti, said William Spindler, a spokesman for the refugee agency. “We are preparing for a larger influx,” he added.
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