Red Cross pulls 71 foreign staff out of Yemen due to insecurity

People walk past a building one day after air strikes destroyed it in Sanaa, Yemen June 6, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

GENEVA (Reuters) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday it had pulled 71 international staff out of Yemen because of security incidents and threats, moving them to Djibouti.

The aid agency called on all parties to Yemen’s three-year conflict to provide security guarantees so it can keep running its surgical, water and food assistance programs there. Some 450 ICRC staff remain in Yemen, a spokeswoman said.

An ICRC employee, a Lebanese national, was killed on April 21 by an unknown gunmen who opened fire on his car in the southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz as he was on his way to visit a prison, it said at the time.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Larry King)