Harrowing photos show tots in Yemen slowly starving to death as the war-torn country is ravaged by famine
THESE devastating pictures lay bare the appalling famine killing children in war-torn Yemen.
While the world watches the event unfolding in Aleppo with horror, seven million people endure hunger thanks to nearly two years of war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthis.
Staggeringly, eight out of 10 children are stunted by malnutrition and every 10 minutes a child dies due to preventable diseases, UN agency figures show.
And more than half of Yemen's 28 million people are "food insecure".
Yemen's humanitarian catastrophe is set to worsen as the war has ruined the economy and is stopping food supplies getting through, driving the country to the brink of famine, the top UN aid official in the country told Reuters.
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"Throughout the whole of this country kids are dying," said Jamie McGoldrick. UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen.
In the latest setback, Yemen's biggest traders have stopped new wheat imports due to a crisis at the central bank, documents seen by Reuters show.
To scrape by, several families often rely on one salary-earner, and child marriage is increasing, with girls married off at the age of 15 on average, and often younger.
The UN estimates that 18.8 million people need some form of humanitarian aid but it struggles to deliver supplies, partly because of the war and partly due to a lack of funding.
The disruption of wheat shipments will exacerbate the problem.
"We know that early next year we will face significant problems," said McGoldrick, who described the economy as "shredded".
Almost half of Yemen's 22 governorates are already officially rated as being in an emergency food situation, he said.
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