Local Editor
The number of Yemenis on the brink of famine could rise to 12 million - or two in five of the population - from around 8.5 million in coming months due to escalating war and a deepening economic crisis, the United Nations food agency said on Monday.
Yemen has been torn apart by more than three years of civil war between the resigned Yemeni regime, backed by a Saudi-led military coalition and based in the south, and the Houthi movement that controls the north, including the capital Sana’a. The nation of some 30 million is the Arabian Peninsula's poorest.
As fighting intensifies, particularly around the main port city of Hodeida, and the economic situation deteriorates, the World Food Program (WFP) said it feared millions struggling to make ends meet would succumb to severe hunger and disease.
"If this situation persists, we could see an additional 3.5 million severely insecure Yemenis... who urgently require regular food assistance to prevent them from slipping into famine-like conditions," WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel said.
The agency is scaling up its emergency food and nutrition aid to reach 8 million Yemenis every month, he said.
The Saudi-led alliance, which is backed by Western countries led by Britain and the United States supplying weapons and intelligence, imposed a blockade on Hodeida for several weeks at the end of last year, saying it was to allegedly prevent Houthis from importing weapons.
Yemen traditionally imports 90 percent of its food.
All its air, land and seaports were currently functioning, but fighting around Hodeida was preventing WFP workers from reaching its 51,000 tons of wheat stocks at the Red Sea Mills facility - enough to feed 3.7 million people in northern and central Yemen for one month, Verhoosel said.
Saudi Arabia and some of its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan, launched the brutal war in an attempt to reinstall former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the country’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has played a significant role, alongside the Yemeni army, in defending the nation.
Some 15,000 Yemenis have so far been killed and thousands more injured as a result of the bloody campaign which has also left a record 22.2 million Yemenis in a dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger, according to UN statistics.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
