(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The United Nations warned yesterday of a "developing famine" in Yemen, where more than half a million children are severely malnourished, and pressed for access to its war-torn regions.
Impoverished Yemen has been wracked by conflict since March when a Saudi-led Arab coalition launched air strikes against Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels.
The UN's World Food Programme said the conflict has left Yemen on the brink of a famine in the areas of fighting.
"All the signs that will lead us to the qualifiable definition of famine are in fact developing in front of our eyes," WFP executive director Ertharin Cousin told reporters in Cairo following a three-day mission to Yemen.
Cousin called for immediate and regular access for WFP aid workers to areas of conflict.
Already in June, the UN envoy for Yemen, Ould Cheik Ahmed, appealed for a ceasefire and warned: "We are one step away from famine." WFP said a study it carried out showed food security was at its most precarious for Yemen's 1.3 million internally displaced people.
The agency said it has reached 3.5 million people with food supplies since the conflict erupted. More than 1.2 million children are suffering from moderate to acute malnutrition and over half a million children are severely malnourished, it said.
Separately, the UN children's fund said yesterday that an average of eight children are being killed or maimed each day in Yemen's conflict and warned of "terrifying consequences" for the country's youth. Nearly 400 children have been killed and over 600 others injured in the past four months, Unicef said in a report.
"Disrupted health services, increased levels of child malnutrition, closed schools and higher numbers of children recruited by fighting groups are among the effects of the conflict now ravaging the Arab world's poorest country," it said.
"Children are being killed by bombs or bullets and those that survive face the growing threat of disease and malnutrition," said the Unicef representative in Yemen, Julien Harneis. The agency said: "As devastating as the conflict is for the lives of children right now, it will have terrifying consequences for their future".
Nearly 10 million children - 80 per cent of Yemen's under-18 population - are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, it said.
In its report, WFP estimates the number of food insecure people in Yemen is now almost 13 million, including six million deemed "severely food insecure and in urgent need of external assistance".
The UN food agency made an urgent plea for donations ahead of the start of an emergency food supply operation in Yemen next month expected to cost about $320m.
On the ground, a Saudi soldier was killed in cross-border fire from Yemen. Hamad Al Kaabi was killed after heavy gunfire hit a border post in the southwestern region of Jazan.
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