At least 400,000 Yemeni children under 5 could die of starvation this year - UN agencies
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DUBAI (Reuters) - At least 400,000 Yemeni children under 5 could die of starvation this year without urgent intervention amid soaring rates of severe malnutrition driven by war and the coronavirus pandemic, four U.N. agencies said on Friday.
The warnings come nearly six years after the outbreak of war that rendered 80% of the population reliant on humanitarian aid.
In a report published on Friday, the agencies projected a 22% increase in severe acute malnutrition among children under 5 in Yemen, compared to 2020.
Severe acute malnutrition means there is a risk of death from lack of food. Aden, Hodeidah, Taiz and Sanaa are among the worst-hit areas, the report said.
“These numbers are yet another cry for help from Yemen where each malnourished child also means a family struggling to survive,” World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley said in a joint statement with the Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAO), UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Another 2.3 million under 5s are expected to suffer acute malnutrition in 2021. Acute malnutrition among young children and mothers in Yemen has increased with each year of the conflict, they said, driven by the high rates of disease and rising rates of food insecurity.
Around 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women are projected to be acutely malnourished this year.
Famine has never been officially declared in Yemen. The U.N. says the country is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Along with conflict, economic decline and the pandemic, a shortfall of donations last year is also contributing to the worsening humanitarian crisis.
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Woman strangles son over dirtied clothes, missing school books in Gurugram: Police
Gurugram, May 16: The woman who was arrested for allegedly killing her 8-year-old son revealed that she committed the crime in a fit of rage when he returned home from school in dirtied clothes and two of his books were missing, police said on Thursday.
The accused, Poonam Devi, was arrested on Tuesday and was produced in court on Thursday. The court sent her to judicial custody, they said.
The police had earlier suspected that the woman killed her son after he came to know of her alleged illicit relationship with a man.
"During the police interrogation, Devi revealed that on Monday, when her 8-year-old son Karthik returned from school, his clothes were smeared with wall putty and he had also lost two books. In a fit of rage, she first removed his clothes and made him stand outside their house," Assistant Commissioner of Police Varun Dahiya said.
"When he insisted on going to some shop, she strangled him with her ‘chunni',” ACP Dahiya said.
The matter came to light on Monday when the police received a call from a private hospital regarding the death of a child, police said.
The victim's father, Arvind Kumar, who works as a labourer, spotted injury marks on the neck of his and claimed that he was murdered. Following this, he filed a complaint at the Sector 18 police station, police said.
In his complaint, he said that a neighbour informed him that his son had fallen ill. When he reached home, he found him saw lying unconscious and his wife was crying next to him. They rushed him to a hospital where the doctors declared him brought dead, they said.
During the investigation, the police identified the victim's mother, Devi as a suspect and arrested her. She later confessed to the crime and was in police remand for a day, they said.
The family hails from Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, they added.
