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A starved Yemeni child receives treatment amid a worsening malnutrition crisis in the emergency ward of a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 15, 2017.
(EPA) |
An international aid group says an estimated 130 children or more die every day in war-torn Yemen from extreme hunger and disease.
Save the Children said late Wednesday that a continuing blockade by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Shiite rebels is likely to further increase the death rate. It says over 50,000 children are believed to have died in 2017.
Saudi Arabia blocked Yemen's ports after a rebel missile attack near Riyadh. However it said Monday the coalition would lift the blockade after widespread international criticism.
The U.N. and over 20 aid groups have said the blockade could bring millions of people closer to "starvation and death."
“It will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year where tens of thousands of people were affected. It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011,” said Mark Lowcock the U.N. under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, in a briefing at the U.N. Security Council.
"It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims."
Over the past two years, over 10,000 people were killed and 3 million displaced amid the coalition's air campaign.
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