UN warns of danger of widespread famine in Yemen

The United Nations warned on Tuesday that Yemen was on the verge of widespread famine after three years of a brutal war.

"There is now a clear and present danger of an imminent and great big famine engulfing Yemen," UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock said.

He urged a humanitarian ceasefire around facilities involved in food aid distribution, and infrastructure, at a meeting of the Security Council convened on the British initiative because of the deterioration in Yemen.

"The parties to the conflict continue to violate international humanitarian law," and while earlier UN estimates put those in danger of famine at 11 million, the real number facing it now is 14 million people.

Since the last UN warning in September, "the situation (on the ground) has gotten worse," Emergency Relief Coordinator Lowcock said. 

Yemen's brutal conflict has since 2015 left some 10,000 people dead and has created what the UN has dubbed the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government after the Houthi rebels ousted it from the capital Sanaa and swathes of the country's north. 

Last week, a new report condemned what it called the Saudi-led coalition's calculated starvation of Yemeni civilians by deliberately bombing food production and agriculture.