UNITED NATIONS, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), on Monday warned that families in some of the war-torn Yemen's most food insecure areas will die unless the international community provides additional resources and authorities in Yemen allow aid workers access to hungry people.
Cousin, who is in Aden and Sana'a on a three-day visit, met with families struggling to feed their children and visited nutrition centres and health facilities, UN officials said here.
"It is a race against time, and if we do not scale up assistance to reach those who are severely food insecure, we will see famine-like conditions in some of the worst-hit and inaccessible areas which means that people will die," Cousin said.
Describing the situation as "heartbreaking," Cousin noted that WFP reached a record number of 4.9 million food insecure people in the small Middle Esst country in February alone.
The UN food relief agency has plans to reach all seven million in need, but urgently needs nearly 460 million U.S. dollars, and access by sea and land.
"Humanitarians and aid workers are making a difference in Yemen as they have prevented Yemen from slipping into a famine until now," she said.
"The challenge is that there are areas that are inaccessible where people are severely food insecure. These are the pockets that are at serious risk of people dying of hunger," she added.
The two-year long conflict in Yemen has worsened chronic food insecurity in the country, which was already considered one of the poorest in the world. Yemen has been experiencing a civil conflict since the UN-backed government was ousted by the Houthi militants in late 2014.
The conflict triggered a Saudi Arabia-led military intervention in late March 2016, which has been deepening the country's suffering.
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