Yemen faces the world’s largest famine in decades “with millions of victims” if aid deliveries are not resumed, a senior UN official has warned.<\/p>\n
Mark Lowcock, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, urged the Saudi-led coalition to lift its blockade of the conflict-torn country.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the coalition shut air, land and sea routes into Yemen after Houthi rebels fired a missile at Riyadh.<\/p>\n
The ballistic warhead was intercepted near the Saudi capital.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia said the blockade was needed to stop Iran sending weapons to the rebels.<\/p>\n
Iran denies arming the rebels, who have fought the Saudi-led coalition since 2015.<\/p>\n
Mr Lowcock was speaking on Wednesday, after briefing the UN Security Council on the issue behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
“I have told the council that unless those measures are lifted… there will be a famine in Yemen”, Mr Lowcock told reporters.<\/p>\n
“It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the UN and the Red Cross warned that a “catastrophic” situation threatened millions of Yemenis who relied on life-saving aid deliveries.<\/p>\n
The Red Cross said its shipment of chlorine tablets, vital to combating a cholera epidemic which has affected more than 900,000 people, had been blocked.<\/p>\n
The UN says seven million Yemenis are on the brink of famine.<\/p>\n
The country relies on imports for virtually everything civilians need to survive, but now neither food, fuel nor medicine can get in.<\/p>\n
More than 8,670 people – 60% of them civilians – have been killed and 49,960 injured in air strikes and fighting on the ground since the coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, according to the UN.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yemen faces the world’s largest famine in decades “with millions of victims” if aid deliveries are not resumed, a senior UN official has warned. Mark Lowcock, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, urged the Saudi-led coalition to lift its blockade of the conflict-torn country. On Monday, the coalition shut air, land and sea routes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1686,2297],"class_list":["post-369755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-un","tag-yemen-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=369755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=369755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=369755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=369755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}