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REUTERS
SANAA
IN the malnutrition ward of a hospital in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, doctors weigh toddlers with protruding rib cages and skeletal limbs.
Twenty children, most under the age of two, being treated at the ward in Sab'een Hospital are among hundreds of thousands of children suffering from severe malnutrition in the impoverished country that has been ravaged by a more than three years of war.
"The conflict has made Yemen a living hell for its children," Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen, told Reuters.
She said more than 11 million children, or about 80 percent of the country's population under the age of 18, were facing the threat of food shortages, disease, displacement and acute lack of access to basic social services.
"An estimated 1.8 million children are malnourished in the country. Nearly 400,000 of them are severely acute malnourished and they are fighting for their lives every day."
A coalition of Sunni Muslim Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, intervened in Yemen's war in 2015 against the Iranian-aligned Houthis after they drove the internationally recognised government out of the capital Sanaa.
The war has unleashed the world's most urgent humanitarian crisis in the nation of 28 million, where 8.4 million people are believed to be on the verge of starvation and 22 million people are dependent on aid.
