Yemenis face growing challenges amid widespread famine

People in Yemen confront the world's worst humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country where 8.3 million are entirely dependent on external food aid, the UN says.

Boys eat bread they collected from a garbage dump on the outskirts of the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, Yemen, January 7, 2018.
Reuters

Boys eat bread they collected from a garbage dump on the outskirts of the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, Yemen, January 7, 2018.

Families in Yemen are struggling to survive as fighting between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces has left millions of people facing starvation. 

Yemen is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, where 8.3 million people are entirely dependent on external food aid and 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, a potentially lethal condition, the UN says.

Bakita Ali and her family are among many who can't afford to meet their basic needs.

"I have eight children. I have nothing to feed them. Today, I went to too many places to get them some food, but I couldn't get enough. I am so tired because I had to walk a lot today. We have nothing here," said Ali, a resident of Hodeida.

TRT World's Clinton Nagoor has an exclusive report from Hodeida province.

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The Saudi-led forces have allowed only a little aid to trickle into the country as it shut off Hodeida port – a Houthi-held port on the Red Sea that is the country's main entrepot for food – on November 6 to stop an alleged flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. Tehran has denied supplying arms to the Houthis.

"Our life during the war has been very difficult and it has got worse since the blockade. During the last three years, people have suffered a lot. I have five children, and sometimes the food I get is barely enough for two people, but we all have to share it," said Abdullah Omar, a Hodeida resident.

Yemen has been torn apart by three years of conflict between the Saudi-backed government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Houthi rebels, who control most of northern Yemen, including Sanaa. Factional fighting in the south also compounds the misery.

The war has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced two million.

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