A CHILD UNDER AGE OF 10 DYING EVERY 10 MINUTES IN YEMEN: UN OFFICIAL

The United Nations aid chief warned that Yemen is sliding deeper into humanitarian crisis and could face famine this year.

The poor Arab country has been engulfed in war since a Saudi-led coalition launched a bombing campaign in March 2015 to push back Houthis who had seized the capital Sana’a and other cities.

“The conflict in Yemen is now the primary driver of the largest food security emergency in the world,” Stephen O’Brien, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told the UN Security Council on Thursday.

“If there is no immediate action, famine is now a possible scenario for 2017.”

About 14 million people – nearly 80% of the entire Yemeni population – are in need of food aid, half of whom are severely food insecure, O’Brien said.

At least 2 million people need emergency food assistance to survive, he added.

The situation is particularly dire for children with some 2.2 million infants now suffering from acute malnourishment – an increase of 53% from late 2015.

“Overall, the plight of children remains grim: a child under the age of 10 dying every 10 minutes of preventable causes,” O’Brien said.

The Saudi-led coalition’s shutdown of the Sana'a airport has had a heavy toll on civilians because medicine cannot be flown in and Yemenis cannot receive treatment abroad.

O’Brien warned that Yemen could run out of wheat within months because foreign banks no longer accept financial transactions with many of the country’s commercial banks.

The country is almost entirely dependent on imports, most of which transit through the Hudaydah port, which was bombed by the coalition in 2015.

O’Brien said the Saudi-led coalition had ordered a vessel carrying four mobile cranes for the port to leave Yemeni waters and it was now awaiting approval from Riyadh to deliver the new equipment.

The cranes will boost the port’s capacity to handle humanitarian cargo.

The United Nations is calling for a ceasefire in Yemen to allow urgently needed deliveries of humanitarian aid and to resume political talks on ending the war.

http://www.shiitenews.org/index.php/yemen/item/26859-a-child-under-age-of-10-dying-every-10-minutes-in-yemen-un-official