UN leads £65m plan to stop huge oil spill off Yemen during first ceasefire in six years

The UN is to stage a rare donor conference on Wednesday in a bid to raise the $80m (£65m) necessary to prevent an ageing oil tanker off the west coast of Yemen exploding and causing an environmental disaster potentially four times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill near Alaska in 1989.

Previous UN mediation efforts over the potentially lethal byproduct of Yemen’s civil war have failed, partly because the Houthi rebels that now control the capital, Sana’a, have not been able to agree terms for UN-commissioned engineers to board the ship. The Houthis have regarded the ship and its lucrative cargo as their possession and a bargaining chip in the negotiations with the Saudi- and Emirati-backed forces.