Millions starving in ‘forgotten war’ as Saudi bombs tear Yemen apart
October 30 / Yamanyoon
Millions of people in Yemen are starving, including children who will be crippled for life, the UN has warned as new photographs from areas worst hit by the war show teenagers dying of hunger.
Yemen now has one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday. More than 14 million people are going hungry, half of them starving. At least ten of the country’s 21 governorates are close to a famine.
The lack of food in the gulf’s poorest state is largely the result of a bombing campaign and blockade by a Saudi Arabian-led coalition. Since March last year the gulf alliance has been trying to flush out the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who took control of the country after ousting President Hadi last spring.
“Hunger is increasing every day and people have exhausted all their survival strategies. Millions of people cannot survive without external assistance,” Muhannad Hadi, head of WFP in the Middle East, said.
“An entire generation could be crippled by hunger,” Torben Due, the WFP director in Yemen, said.
The 18-month war has killed 10,000 people, a third of them civilians, and left 21 million people reliant on food and medical aid.
The health ministry announced that it had run out of funds last month.
Photographs of an emaciated teenager in the Red Sea city of Hodeida have been widely shared online. Saida Ahmad Baghili, 18, who was admitted to al-Thawra hospital on Saturday, is bedridden and unable to eat. Medical staff said that she was surviving on juice, milk and tea. She is from the small village of Shajn, 50 miles southwest of Hodeida, and developed signs of malnutrition five years ago. Her condition deteriorated sharply after food and medical supplies were cut off to the area.
Saida Ahmad Baghili, an 18-year-old Yemeni woman lies in bed at the al-Thawra hospital where she is receiving treatment for severe malnutrition. Picture: AFP
“Her father couldn’t [afford to] send her anywhere,” her aunt, Saida Ali Baghili, said.
Before the war Yemen relied on imports for 90 per cent of its food, medicine and fuel. The majority came through Hodeida, which has been badly damaged by coalition bombing raids. The country is now receiving 30 per cent of what it needs, according to the UN, as shipments are stopped by the Saudi-led alliance.
People living in Hodeida, where a third of children under five are suffering from acute malnutrition, said that they had been forced to eat grass and drink seawater before a trickle of aid managed to get into the area last month. “Before the aid we were surviving on anything edible like green leaves, grass. Now we exist on bread and tea from the handouts,” a man who knew Ms Baghili said.
UNICEF estimates that three million people are in need of immediate food supplies in Yemen, while 1.5 million children suffer from malnutrition. Picture: AFP
He said that she was one of six emergency cases admitted to al-Thawra hospital this week.
“There is no water so sometimes we drink from the sea if we can’t get to a well,” he added. “Many of our homes have been bombed so we live out in the open in reed huts.”
Deif Allah, a Yemeni photographer, said that the worst affected were babies who were disfigured because their mothers were too weak to breastfeed and were forced to feed them sugar water. “People look like skin on skeletons,” he said.
Saudi Arabia has denied that it has imposed a blockade on Yemen, insisting that restrictions are in place only to prevent the Houthi rebels from obtaining arms.
“No, there is no blockade. Control is different from blockade, which means that nobody can enter or leave the country,” Major-General Ahmed Asisi, a coalition spokesman, said on Tuesday. He accused the Houthis of barring civilians from leaving their territory and selling supplies at inflated prices.
UN officials said that Saudi Arabia often blocked delivery of supplies, regardless of whether they were approved. “Delays still occur even after the UN provides the permits,” George Khoury, head of the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs in Yemen, said.
Since August Saudi Arabia has barred all commercial flights into and out of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, which was the only way out of the country. “People are dying because they are not allowed to travel abroad,” Mr Khoury said.
Source\ http://www.thetimes.co.uk