UN Agencies Warn of ‘Food Emergency’ in Yemen

Date: 22 June 2016 - 21:25

News ID: ۲۸۱۰۹

NEW YORK (Dispatches) – Two UN agencies have warned of acute food shortages and a hunger crisis amounting to an "emergency” in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been waging a deadly war for some 15 months.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, in a report published on Tuesday, announced that food insecurity in Yemen has intensified significantly over the past year, and three million Yemeni children are currently at risk of malnutrition.
"At least seven million people — a quarter of the population — are living under emergency levels of food insecurity,” the UN agencies said in a statement.
"This reflects a 15-percent increase since June 2015. A further 7.1 million people are in a state of crisis,” they added.
Jamie McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said, "This clearly shows the huge magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.”
"This is one of the worst crises in the world and is continuing to get worse,” he said.
In a separate development, more than a dozen civilians have lost their lives in a new Saudi airstrike against Yemen’s southwestern province of Lahij.
Saudi jets attacked a residential neighborhood in the al-Ka’abin district of the province, killing 15 people, Yemen’s al-Masirah reported.
Saudi warplanes also carried out a number of sorties over the mountainous northwestern province of Sa’ada, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Separately, Saudi-sponsored Yemeni militiamen loyal to former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi launched missiles against the positions of Houthi Ansarullah fighters in the Nihm district of Sana’a Province as well as al-Wazi’iyah district in the southwestern province of Ta’izz, though no casualties were reported.
Ansarullah fighters also established control over the strategic al-Jales hilltop surrounding the al-Qabbaytah district of the Lahij Province on Tuesday after two weeks of fighting with pro-Saudi militia forces.