Amid furor over Khashoggi murder, UN warns millions more face starvation in Yemen
By
Bill Van Auken
17 October 2018
The United Nations has warned that the US-backed, Saudi-led war against Yemen is threatening to engulf millions more of the impoverished nation’s people in the worst famine the world has seen in over 100 years.
Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said Tuesday, “We are literally looking at hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people who may not survive.”
The World Food Program, the UN agency coordinating relief efforts in the shattered country, reported that it has been forced to revise its estimate, given just two weeks ago, of 8.5 million Yemenis on the brink of famine, stating that another 5.6 million are being driven to starvation by the effects of the three-and-a-half-year-old war on the country’s infrastructure and economy.
“Things are deteriorating very, very quickly,” said Grande. “The implications are enormous, and, truthfully, frightening. The reality is that time may be running out.”
The UN warning came amid the growing crisis over the disappearance and state assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.
US politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have joined in denouncing the Saudi regime for the killing of Khashoggi. The journalist went into self-exile in the US a year ago, after serving for decades as an interlocutor between the Saudi regime and the Western media and working closely with…