SANA’A (Dispatches) – The United Nations has warned that severe funding shortages pose a threat to the flow of humanitarian assistance to Yemen, saying food rations have already been cut by half for eight million people in the impoverished country.
“Aid agencies are doing everything they can to respond to people’s needs, but acute funding shortages are threatening the flow of humanitarian assistance,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a news briefing.
“Food rations have already been cut by half for eight million people. Those people may soon stop receiving food assistance from the UN altogether,” he said.
He noted that at the start of this year, lack of cash had already forced two-thirds of major UN aid programs to reduce or close, adding, “Further cuts are on the horizon if funding is not received.” 
He added his concern over the “grave situation” in Yemen, including the impact of the ongoing Saudi-led aggression, which is causing civilian casualties on a daily basis.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, backed by the United States and European powers, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
The UN spokesperson noted that over 23,000 Yemeni civilians have been displaced since the beginning of this year, most of them in Hudaydah, Ma’rib, Shabwah and Ta’iz provinces.
In a latest development, Yemeni army troops and fighters from the allied Popular Committees have been engaged in fierce clashes with Saudi mercenaries in the country’s northwestern province of Hajjah, inflicting heavy losses on them and killing a senior commander.
Informed sources, requesting anonymity, told Yemen’s official Saba news agency that Brigadier General Haikal al-Samini, commander of a military unit in the so-called Fifth Military Zone of the Saudi-led coalition, was killed on Friday after the Yemeni army troops and their allies targeted Saudi-sponsored militants in the Harad district.
According to Yemeni media outlets, at least 53 senior Saudi-backed militant commanders have been killed over the past few months in the course of clashes in Yemen’s central oil-producing province of Ma’rib.
Additionally, two civilians were killed after Saudi forces fired mortar shells at residential areas in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada.
Local sources told al-Masirah TV that a civilian was killed in the Qatabir district, and another in the border Shada’a district.