File drone footage shot on March 23, 2020 shows the Red Sea Project site on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. The Red Sea Project, one of Saudi Arabia's most ambitious tourism projects, has recently identified the location of its overwater villas and hotels, the Red Sea Development Company said in a press release on May 1, 2020. (The Red Sea Development Company/Handout via Xinhua)

The United Nations is launching a crowd-funding campaign for an operation intended to prevent an aging Yemeni oil tanker from unleashing a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, a senior official said on Monday.

"We hope to raise $5 million by the end of June," David Gressly, UN's humanitarian coordinator for the war-hit country, told an online press briefing, adding it was an "ambitious" target. 

"Today I launched a @UN crowdfunding campaign because we urgently need funds to start the emergency operation before it is too late," he said in a subsequent Twitter post.

The decaying 45-year-old oil tanker FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war more than seven years ago. 

It is in "imminent" danger of breaking up, the UN warned in May.

An operation to transfer its 1.1 million barrels of oil to a different vessel could begin as soon as July, according to a website for the crowd-funding campaign, which will begin accepting donations on Tuesday. 

A UN pledging conference in May for the oil-transfer operation fell far short of its $80 million target, bringing in just $33 million. 

On Sunday, neighboring Saudi Arabia said that it would contribute $10 million.

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 after Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa the previous year.

Environmentalists warn the cost of the salvage operation is a pittance compared to the estimated $20 billion it would cost to clean up a spill. 

AFP