The humanitarian situation in Yemen is getting worse, said the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

According to him, Yemeni people are threatened with death from starvation, UN press service reported.

“It is far from clear that the recent intensification of fighting is producing any winners. It is, though, abundantly clear, all too abundantly clear, who the losers are: millions of Yemenis civilians, most of them women and children, whose lives are right on the line,” he said.

According to him, two recent developments are now threatening to “overwhelm the aid operation.”

“The first is a marked economic deterioration, symptomized by the depreciation of the Yemeni Rial by some 30 per cent in the last month or so,” said Lowcock adding because almost all the food consumed in Yemen is imported, that depreciation translates directly into a sharp increase in the price of food, who are food insecure but who are not reached by the aid operation.

“We are already seeing pockets of famine-like-conditions – including cases where people are eating leaves because they have no other form of sustenance,” he added.