U.N. delivers urgent health supplies to Aden but food stalled

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it had delivered medical supplies to the southern Yemeni city of Aden, where fighting has badly disrupted health provision, but that food rations had been delayed.

The World Health Organization brought 46.4 tonnes of assistance including trauma kits, medicines to treat malaria and diarrhoeal diseases, and water and sanitation supplies for more than 84,000 people.

"It took us days and days and days to organise the safe passage ... But it did arrive in Aden last Saturday. It was the first time that we got a convoy into Aden for weeks," Johannes Van Der Klaauw, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, told a news briefing.

More than 3,000 people have been killed and 1.2 million displaced in a conflict between Shi'ite Houthis and forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is leading a Sunni coalition carrying out air strikes on Yemen since late March in support of Hadi.

The U.N. convoy was to have included rations from the World Food Programme (WFP) "but the WFP trucks in the end were disconnected from that convoy" he said without elaborating.

Hunger and disease are threatening the 1 million residents of Aden, now a war zone caught between local militiamen and Houthi fighters, aid agencies say.

SHIPS DIVERTED

The United Nations says 21 million people need help, about 80 percent of the population of the country.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is "very much disappointed" that a U.N.-brokered humanitarian pause in fighting did not take hold over the weekend, his spokesman said on Monday.

Van Der Klaauw said that the U.N. wanted to have aid ships dock in Aden. "But since the pause didn't take place, we still have a big problem that Aden is not reachable by sea. And it should be."

As vessels are diverted to the northern port of Hodeida, goods have to be taken by land to Aden and there is a perception "that vessels have only gone into that part of Yemen which is in the hands of the de facto Houthi authorities".

Saudi Arabia pledged $274 million in mid-April to cover fully a U.N. appeal for Yemen, but no funds have been received, Van Der Klaauw said.

Aid agencies are negotiating funding with Saudi authorities and there are issues as the kingdom is a "non-traditional donor" and also party to the conflict, he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Ralph Boulton)