Yemen hunger crisis could become 'absolutely devastating': UN

The hunger crisis in Yemen threatens to become "absolutely devastating" as renewed fighting grips the country, the UN's World Food Programme warned Friday.

The WFP said that unless the international community stepped up its efforts to help, the outlook was bleak.

A renewed ground campaign waged by the Iran-backed Houthis against Yemen's Saudi-backed government forces has left hundreds dead and is deepening the country's humanitarian crisis.

"Hunger in Yemen today is accelerating before our eyes," said Matthew Hollingworth, WFP's assistant executive director for programme operations.

The latest flare-up "threatens to be absolutely devastating" for food security in the country, he told a press conference in Geneva, speaking from Rome.

"We are scaling up as the WFP, but we're doing so with very limited resources and access to areas that we need to get into," he said, warning that the crisis could compound "far beyond" Yemen's borders.

Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and remains gripped by a vast humanitarian crisis.

Fighting intensified in September as the Houthis launched a lightning offensive that saw them seize Yemen's entire Red Sea coast, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a vital shipping lane.

Hollingworth said the fighting had had an immediate impact on the ability of people in Yemen -- population 35 million -- to put food on the table, with almost three in four households now unable to meet their basic food needs.

"That's a record number for this year in just a few weeks," he said, adding that food prices were rising sharply.

Yemen is exceptionally vulnerable because it imports around 90 percent of all the food it consumes, he added.

He said the WFP was seeing families arriving in cities after walking for days without food or water, while some were attempting to survive on bread and soup made from anything available, including leaves and grass.

WFP was helping more than 1.5 million people in government-controlled areas before the latest intensification of fighting, but was now finding it increasingly hard to reach frontline areas.

Hollingworth said they were prevented from reaching some 350,000 people they used to serve.

"Unless we get new funding, in a few weeks we will run out of stocks and money" to help newly-displaced people, "but also the millions of people for whom WFP has been a crucial lifeline", he said.

"If the world doesn't step up soon to help Yemen, the outlook is going to get bleak."

WFP said it needed $109 million to provide emergency food and nutrition assistance for up to 1.5 million people affected by the escalation.

It also needs $158 million to sustain its regular operations for 2.4 million people through to March 2027.