UN to double food aid to Yemen

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has said that it will nearly double food aid to Yemen to reach 14 million people a month -- almost half the war-ravaged country's population.

Yemen is in the grip of the world's worst hunger crisis as government troops backed by a Saudi-led coalition battles Huthi rebels.

On Wednesday, 35 Yemeni and international NGOs called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the impoverished country, and said 14 million people were "on the brink of famine".

The WFP is providing food assistance to about seven to eight million people every day, "but the situation has now got so dire that WFP is preparing to scale up", spokesperson Herve Verhoosel told journalists in Geneva on Thursday.

He added, "Indications are that even greater efforts will be needed to avert mass starvation. The new target of 14 million requires a huge amount of logistic work, outreach, funding and preparation."
"Unless it does, this will become a country of living ghosts, its people reduced to sacks of bones. Humanitarians can only do so much in the face of relentless bombing and unconscionable war tactics that spare no one."