An estimated 85,000 children under the age of five have starved to death over the last three years as a result of Yemen’s civil war, a report from Save the Children has found, as the charity urged an immediate ceasefire to prevent more loss of life.

The figure is a conservative estimate based on UN data on severe acute malnutrition, which the international body says has afflicted more than 1.3 million children since the conflict between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition that seeks to restore Yemen’s exiled government began in 2015.

About 14 million people – half of Yemen’s population – are currently at risk of famine, largely because of Saudi border blockades designed to weaken the Houthis, which have also strangled civilian access to food, fuel, aid and commercial goods.

Fears for Yemen’s civilian population have increased in recent weeks because of an escalation in fighting around the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, through which about 80% of the country’s imports flow.

Even a small amount of damage to the port’s facilities, and a delay in aid deliveries, is likely to lead the UN to declare a widespread famine.

Who are the Houthis and why are they fighting the Saudi coalition in Yemen? Read more

“I am scared of the war and worried we won’t have food. It is distressing,” said Suad, a mother to 13-month-old Nusair, whom Save the Children is treating for severe acute malnutrition. “I can’t go to sleep, it is torturing, and I am worried about my children. I couldn’t live if any harm came to them.”



The new violence in Hodeidah has forced the charity to divert shipments for the rebel-held north of the country via Aden, a city nominally loyal to the government, causing delivery delays of up to two weeks.

“This conflict has created a perfect storm of conditions that has driven the country to the brink of famine,” said Bhanu Bhatnagar, a Save the Children spokesman. “The violence has disrupted food production and destroyed hospitals and health centres where the weak and sick can be treated.

“Barriers to importing and distributing supplies have severely restricted the amount of food getting into and around the country. And in markets where food is actually available, ordinary people simply can’t afford to buy it as salaries have been unpaid for months and the currency has collapsed in value.”

The UN’s special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has extracted promises from both the coalition and the Houthis to attend peace talks at the end of November after a failed round in September.

Griffiths flew into rebel-held capital Sanaa Wednesday to push for fresh peace talks.

A draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire was presented to the UN security council on Monday, although a vote has not yet been timetabled.

“For children under the age of five this situation is proving a death sentence,” Bhatnagar said. “What is shocking about Yemen is that these 85,000 deaths are not a result of drought or climate change, they are entirely the result of a manmade conflict that is fuelled by countries who have the power to stop it.”

The UK – along with other western governments – has been repeatedly criticised by rights groups for its support for the Saudi-led coalition, including arms sales.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said the conflict was a “humanitarian catastrophe”, and told MPs the UN resolution seeking to relieve the humanitarian crisis in the country put forward by Britain aimed to “maximise the chances of achieving a political settlement”.

Hunt said: “The important thing about the resolution that we are proposing is not that this is the end of the story, in terms of international efforts to broker a ceasefire, this is a step in the road.

“We want a ceasefire, we want a ceasefire that will hold, and we know that the risk that if you go for too much too early in these resolutions is that they end up getting ignored.

“And so this is a carefully brokered form of words designed to get a consensus from both sides that allow talks to start before the end of this month in Stockholm. That’s the objective of this resolution.

“If the talks are successful we will be able to have a much stronger resolution that follows those talks.”</s>One day after President Trump backed the Saudi crown prince over accusations that he may have ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a leading charity has issued a blistering report that poses more uncomfortable questions over Saudi practices.

More than 85,000 children may have died of hunger since Saudi Arabia intervened in the war in Yemen three years ago, according to Save the Children, a British charity.

“For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death and it’s entirely preventable,” said Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s country director in Yemen.

With only a few hospitals still operational, the nongovernmental organization says that the human toll of the conflict cannot be fully captured by simply relying on official numbers.

Instead, the charity used historical mortality rates and United Nations data on Yemeni malnutrition to estimate that more than 25,000, or 20 to 30 percent of all acutely malnourished children, have died every year since April 2015. The estimates, the NGO said, may still be lower than the actual number of deaths.

“Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop. Their immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections, with some too frail to even cry,” said Save the Children representative Kirolos.

“Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it,” he said.

According to the United Nations, half the Yemeni population suffers from famine.

The United States has remained largely silent on the war, even when Saudi Arabia enacted a blockade on its borders with Yemen last November. Since then, human rights groups have struggled to supply some of the most malnourished areas in the country with food and drinking water. About 90 percent of the country is considered to be desert or arid and the Yemeni government heavily relied on food imports before the conflict.

What began as a rebellion by the country’s Shiite-majority Houthi rebels during the Arab Spring has turned into a bigger confrontation between Saudi Arabia and its archrival Iran, which supports the Houthis.

Saudi Arabia has received support from eight other Arab states that are also opposed to Iran’s influence. U.S. officials long argued that the involvement of Iran has made it impossible to end the conflict, but criticism of that assessment has mounted as the conflict became the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Western nations have remained careful in calibrating their responses, to neither disgruntle the wealthy and investment-eager Saudi leadership nor domestic human rights supporters. Germany, for instance, reduced its arms equipment sales to Saudi Arabia and vowed to stop them completely, but approved new sales earlier this year. (Those sales have now been stopped amid the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Khashoggi).

In the United States, Trump has put Saudi investments and arms purchases first, even as members of his administration have pressured the Saudis to stop the Yemeni conflict. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both said in October that the war should come to an end. The United States exports more arms to Saudi Arabia than any other country.

“It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction,” Pompeo said.

Earlier this month, the administration added more pressure by ending its practice of refueling Saudi-coalition aircraft involved in the conflict. Critics said the Saudi military used those planes to drop bombs on nonmilitary targets, killing thousands of civilians.

The Saudi-led coalition appears to be aware of the mounting international resistance, too, and has handed its supporters some arguments in its favor. This week, Saudi Arabia and the UAE pledged $500 million in aid to Yemen.

But the bombardment has continued, according to Save the Children. “In the past few weeks there have been hundreds of airstrikes in and around Hodeidah, endangering the lives of an estimated 150,000 children still trapped in the city,” Kirolos said.

Hodeidah is one of Yemen’s key port cities and has long been the access point to reach the country’s north. As fighting has continued there, nongovernmental organizations have used the port of Aden, in the south, from which it takes two additional weeks to reach the malnourished north of the country, where a majority of the population lives.

As Save the Children was getting ready to release its devastating report Tuesday, Trump addressed the same issue. Ignoring evidence that the Saudi-led coalition has also escalated the conflict, Trump wrote that Iran is instead “responsible for a bloody proxy war.”

“Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave,” Trump continued.

Iran is allied with the Houthi rebels and has been accused of supplying them with weapons, including ballistic missiles, but Iranian troops are not present on the ground in Yemen.

By Wednesday morning, the U.S. president had already moved on, when he tweeted about the role Saudi Arabia has supposedly played in driving down oil prices.

“Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower,” he wrote.

American believed dead after encounter with hostile tribe on isolated Indian Ocean island

Japan wakes up to exploitation of foreign workers as immigration debate rages</s>British charity Save the Children says that an estimated 85,000 children under the age of 5 may have died from extreme hunger or disease since the war in Yemen escalated more than three years ago.

Through new analysis of UN data, the charity found that between April 2015 and October 2018, about 84,701 children under 5 died from untreated cases of severe acute malnutrition — or in simple terms, hunger.

These grim figures, detailing the horrors of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, come as intense fighting has again erupted in Yemen’s strategic port city of Hodeidah — a vital entry point for UN and other humanitarian aid and the center of the conflict between the US-backed Saudi-led coalition and the Iranian-aligned Houthis.

The renewed violence follows progress toward ending Yemen’s war of nearly four years, a conflict that has killed at least 10,000 people and has pushed the nation to the brink of the world’s worst famine in 100 years, leaving 14 million people at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations.

Since a Saudi coalition blockade of the port of Hodeidah, followed by ongoing violence and other disruptions, commercial imports of food have dropped by more than 55,000 metric tons a month, according to Save the Children. That food could meet the needs of 4.4 million people, half of whom are children. Any further decline in imports, the charity warns, could lead to famine.

Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s country director in Yemen, said that the charity is horrified by the number of children who may have died because of hunger.

“Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop. Their immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections, with some too frail to even cry,” Kirolas said. “Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it.”

Save the Children says that an increase in fighting, blockades and bureaucracy in Hodeidah have forced it to bring supplies through the southern port of Aden, tripling the amount of time for that aid to reach the people who need it the most.

An estimated 400,000 children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2018, according to the United Nations — 15,000 more than last year.</s>The United States announced on Wednesday that peace talks to end the war in Yemen would begin next month in Sweden. The announcement came amid growing global pressure to stop the bombing campaigns by a Saudi-led coalition that have unleashed conditions amounting to possible war crimes, according to a United Nations report in August.

The announcement by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis at the Pentagon came on the heels of a statement by the aid agency Save the Children on Wednesday that underscored the harrowing nature of the conflict: An estimated 85,000 children might have died of hunger since the bombings began in 2015.

Experts say Yemen has become the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and 14 million people could soon be on the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations.

“For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death — and it’s entirely preventable,” Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s country director in Yemen, said in the statement. “Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop.”</s>An estimated 85,000 children under the age of five may have starved to death in Yemen in the last three-and-a-half years as a result of the civil war there, according to Save the Children.

It coincides with a UN report that says up to 14 million people are in danger of famine in the region, the number at risk rising sharply following an aid blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition just over a year ago.

Hopes of a ceasefire in the brutal conflict appear to have been dashed after fighting resumed in the port city of Hodeidah between the Saudi-UAE coalition and Houthi rebels.

The military alliance - led by Riyadh - conducted more than 10 airstrikes on rebel-held positions on Tuesday, despite having ordered a halt in its offensive last week amid pressure from the West.

Using data compiled by the UN, Save the Children evaluated mortality rates for untreated cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in children under five years in Yemen.

The charity calculated that even by a conservative estimate approximately 84,700 children with SAM may have died between April 2015 and October 2018.

"We are horrified that some 85,000 children in Yemen may have died because of extreme hunger since the war began. For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death and it's entirely preventable.

"Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop. Their immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections with some too frail to even cry. Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it.

"Save the Children has provided food for 140,000 children and treated more than 78,000 children for malnutrition since the start of the crisis. Despite the challenges, we're saving lives every day."

Britain has drafted a UN Security Council resolution calling for a halt to fighting in Hodeidah, a stop to attacks on populated areas across Yemen and on other countries in the region, and more aid funding.

Saudi Arabia and the coalition it leads first intervened in Yemen in 2015, with the aim of restoring its internationally-recognised government that had been ousted from the capital of Sanaa the year before.

Following the latest renewal of hostilities, a Saudi humanitarian official said the coalition was willing to contribute $500m (£3.9m) to a new aid programme for Yemen.</s>SANAA, Yemen – An estimated 85,000 children under age 5 may have died of hunger and disease since the outbreak of Yemen’s civil war in 2015, an international aid group said Wednesday.

Save the Children based its figures on mortality rates for untreated cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition in young children. The U.N. says more than 1.3 million children have suffered from SAM since a Saudi-led coalition went to war with Yemen’s Houthi rebels in March 2015.

The group said its “conservative estimate” was that 84,701 children may have died, based on historical studies that find that 20 to 30 percent of untreated cases lead to death. It says it calculated the figure based on the number of cases reported in areas where aid groups were unable to intervene.

“For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death and it’s entirely preventable,” said Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s Yemen director. “Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop.”

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The war has given rise to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Three-quarters of Yemen’s people require life-saving assistance and more than 8 million are at risk of starvation. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the fighting.

Save the Children blamed the widespread starvation on a Saudi-led blockade that was tightened a year ago after the Iran-aligned rebels fired a ballistic missile at the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The charity also cited recent fighting in and around the port city of Hodeida, a lifeline through which Yemen imports some 70 percent of its food and humanitarian aid.

It said commercial imports through the rebel-held port have fallen by more than 55,000 metric tons a month – enough to meet the needs of 4.4 million people. Save the Children said it had been forced to bring supplies for the northern Yemen through the southern port of Aden, slowing aid deliveries.</s>A report based on data from the UN suggests that over 85,000 children under the age of five have died as a result of severe malnutrition, with many more currently at risk.

While much of the media remains focused on US-Saudi relations in the wake of the Khashoggi killing, a new report by Save the Children highlights the devastating impact that these countries’ joint war effort has had on millions of society’s most vulnerable members. Using UN data, the charity now estimates that 85,000 children under the age of five may have died from extreme hunger or disease since the war in Yemen began three years ago.

Save the Children says it hopes that the horrific figures will help to push for talks to end the devastating conflict. The new statistics cover the period since April 2015, when Saudi Arabia began airstrikes fearing the rising power of Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthis.

The report suggests that the Saudi alliance’s air and land blockade is the primary reason for the grim developments, particularly given its continued heavy bombardment near the port of Hodeidah, through which Yemen imports 90 percent of its food supply, as well as critical foreign aid. Save the Children’s country director in Yemen, Tamer Kirolos, warns that around 150,000 children are currently at risk in the port city due to a dramatic increase in artillery shelling.

“Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it,” Kirolos said.

The UN reports that at least 6,800 civilians have already been killed and 10,700 injured in the conflict, alongside a massive cholera outbreak affecting over a million people. Last month, they warned that 14 million people, around half of the population, are facing pre-famine conditions.</s>(SANAA, Yemen) — An international aid group says an estimated 85,000 children under age 5 may have died of hunger and disease since the outbreak of Yemen’s civil war in 2015.

Save the Children said Wednesday the “conservative” estimate is based on average mortality rates for Severe Acute Malnutrition, which the U.N. says has afflicted more than 1.3 million children since a Saudi-led coalition went to war with Yemen’s Houthi rebels in March 2015.

Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s Yemen director, says: “For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death and it’s entirely preventable,” adding that “children who die in this way suffer immensely.”

The war and a Saudi-led blockade have created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 8 million people at risk of starvation.</s>As many as 85,000 children in Yemen starved to death in the past three years during its brutal war, an aid group reported on Wednesday.

Using data compiled by the United Nations, Save the Children evaluated mortality rates for untreated cases of severe acute malnutrition in children under five-years old.

The humanitarian agency found some 84,701 children may have starved to death between April 2015 and October 2018 because of a lack of food.

“We are horrified that some 85,000 children in Yemen may have died because of extreme hunger since the war began,” said Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s director in Yemen, in a statement.

“Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop… Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it.”

Since the Saudi-Emirati military intervention in March 2015 in Yemen, commercial imports of food through the vital Hodeidah port have been reduced by more than 55,000 tonnes a month, enough to meet the needs of 4.4 million people, including 2.2 million children, the group said.

The World Food Programme says up to 14 million Yemenis are now at risk of starvation as fighting rages in Hodeidah.

“Any further decline in imports could likely lead directly to famine,” it warned.

The report comes as fighting continues for control of Hodeidah between Houthi rebels and Saudi-Emirati backed forces loyal to Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The World Health Organization says nearly 10,000 people – mostly civilians – have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-Emirati intervention in March 2015, but rights groups believe the death toll may be five times higher.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have announced they would each give $250m in aid to the war-ravaged country to support more than 10 million people.

In Hodeidah, fighting was also under way Tuesday in the main Khamsin Street in the city centre and in al-Saleh district, officials and witnesses said.

Rebel-run Al Masirah TV said the rebels attacked government forces on a main road linking the capital, Sanaa, and Hodeidah. Government forces captured the road in September.

UN envoy Martin Griffiths is expected to meet with Houthi officials in Sanaa on Wednesday.

Both sides have in the past week expressed support for the envoy and his mission to hold talks in Sweden, but that was thrown in jeopardy after fierce clashes flared in Hodeidah late Tuesday.

Just hours before Griffiths’ planned visit, residents in the east of Hodeidah told AFP news agency by telephone they could hear fighting, and reported shrapnel falling in residential neighbourhoods.

Multiple past attempts to hold negotiations between the government alliance and Houthis have failed.

Griffiths said Monday he hoped the rivals would meet in Sweden “within the next few weeks”. No date has been set.</s>A charity says as many as 85,000 children under the age of five may have died from malnutrition or disease as a result of the war in Yemen.

Save the Children estimates that 84,701 children with Severe Acute Malnutrition may have died between April 2015 and October 2018.

The aid agency notes that it used a 'conservative estimate' to come up with its figures.

Blockades and fighting have limited access to key ports and supply points in Yemen - limiting aid agencies' ability to reach civilians impacted by the ongoing war.

Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s Country Director in Yemen, said: “We are horrified that some 85,000 children in Yemen may have died because of extreme hunger since the war began. For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death and it’s entirely preventable.

“Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop... Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it."

The charity is calling for an "immediate end to the fighting so no more lives are lost".

Fighting between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the ousted Yemeni government – supported by a Saudi-led coalition – has been ongoing for the last several years, intensifying a crisis that began with a revolution in 2011.

The conflict has resulted in what's been described by the UN as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

UN officials last month said around 14 million people in Yemen - amounting to half its total population - are facing “pre-famine conditions".
A report by charity Save the Children estimates that 85,000 children died of starvation as a result of the war.