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Over 7.6 million people in Yemen facing food insecurity: UN

Xinhua, May 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

Over 7.6 million people in Yemen are severely food insecure and are in dire need of assistance, said a UN official here on Tuesday.

However, the UN's appeal for 1.8 billion U.S. dollars to reach over 13 million Yemenis this year is underfunded at only 16 percent, said John Ging, director of operations of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs who just came back from Yemen.

Ging noted that 2.5 million people in the country have been displaced by violent conflict since January 2014, and the continued conflict is deepening humanitarian needs which require an urgent increase in attention and support from the international community.

"The simple fact is that the base of donors is too narrow for Yemen," he said. "For a crisis of this size, we have too few countries that are providing us with funding."

The fragile security situation in Yemen has deteriorated since March 2015, when a civil war broke between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullash Saleh, and the government backed by a Saudi-led coalition.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in ground battles and air-strikes since then, and half of them are civilians. Enditem