The Jim Bakker Show

New Famine Fears Loom in Yemen

A nurse checks a boy at a hospital intensive care unit in Sanaa, Yemen

By Jonathan Saul, Noah Browning and Mohammed Ghobari

LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) – Intensive care wards in Yemen’s hospitals are filled with emaciated children hooked up to monitors and drips – victims of food shortages that could get even worse due to a reorganization of the central bank that is worrying importers.

With food ships finding it hard to get into Yemen’s ports due to a virtual blockade by the Saudi-led coalition that has backed the government during an 18-month civil war, over half the country’s 28 million people already do not have enough to eat, according to the United Nations.

Yemen’s exiled president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, last month ordered the central bank’s headquarters to be moved from the capital Sanaa, controlled by Houthi rebels in the north, to the southern port of Aden, which is held by the government. He also appointed a new governor, a member of his government who has said the bank has no money.

Trade sources involved in importing food to the Arab peninsula’s poorest country say this decision will leave them financially exposed and make it harder to bring in supplies.

Diplomats and aid officials believe the crisis surrounding the central bank could adversely affect ordinary Yemenis.

“The politicization of the central bank and attempts by the parties in the conflict to use it as a tool to hurt one another … threaten to push the poorest over the edge,” said Richard Stanforth, humanitarian policy adviser with Oxfam.

“Everything is stacked against the people on the brink of starvation in Yemen.”

The effects of food shortages can already be seen. At the children’s emergency unit at the Thawra hospital in the port of Hodaida, tiny patients with skin sagging over their bones writhe in beds. Hallways and waiting rooms are crowded with parents seeking help for their hungry and dying children.

Salem Abdullah Musabih, 6, lies on a bed at a malnutrition intensive care unit at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodaida, Yemen September 11, 2016. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

Salem Issa, 6, rests his stick-thin limbs on a hospital bed as his mother watches over him. “I have a sick child, I used to feed him biscuits, but he’s sick, he won’t eat,” she said.

A nurse said the ward began taking in around 10 to 20 cases in April, but now struggles with 120 patients per month.

The World Food Programme says half Yemen’s children under five are stunted, meaning they are too short for their age because of chronic malnutrition.

IMPORTERS STRUGGLING

In July, Reuters reported that importers were already struggling to buy food from abroad because $260 million worth of their funds were frozen in Yemeni banks, while Western banks had cut credit lines.

Since then, importers have guaranteed much of the risk of financing shipments themselves.

The decision to move the central bank, seen as the last impartial bastion of the country’s financial system which has helped keep the economy afloat in wartime, is viewed as a major blow for suppliers who are mistrustful of the decision and expect even more chaos ahead. Foreign exchange is already scarce and the sources do not have confidence in the new governor.

All of this will lead to further food disruptions and more hardship for Yemenis already facing impending famine, according to the trade sources.

“We have begun to cancel our forward contracts – it’s just impossible to trade when there is no financial system in place. There is no coverage from the central bank where we can trust them or know them,” said one source.

“This leaves anyone bringing in cargoes completely exposed,” added the source, who declined to be identified due to the worsening security situation and fear of reprisals.

Shipping data showed at least nine vessels carrying supplies such as wheat and sugar were on the way to the Yemeni ports of Hodaida and Salif, but the source said there were worries for forward shipments for late October and November.

A second trade source also active in Yemen confirmed the growing difficulties.

“Western banks are not willing to process payments and the whole system is freezing up. It is an ever growing struggle to do anything commercial,” the second source said.

“Obtaining foreign exchange has to be done through currency smuggling. Yemen is like a country of smugglers now – this is unacceptable.”

A woman holds her child at the door of her hut in al-Tuhaita district of the Red Sea province of Hodaida, Yemen September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

DWINDLING RESERVES

The old central bank in the capital Sanaa used Yemen’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves to guarantee shipments into a country which imports 90 percent of its food.

But Hadi disliked the bank paying salaries to his foes in the army and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement opposed to his internationally recognized government.

Struggling to advance on the battlefield and keen to undermine the Houthis, Hadi dismissed the bank’s governor, Mohamed Bin Humam, named Finance Minister Monasser Al Quaiti in his place and decreed the bank be moved to Aden.

It was a sudden decision that aroused suspicion among traders.

“The governor Humam enjoyed the confidence of all parties since he was clearly independent and working in the best interests of Yemen. To now appoint a minister of finance of the government is a retrograde step and none of the traders have any confidence in him or in the bank in Aden,” the first trade source said.

The new governor of the central bank did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Quaiti told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Thursday he had inherited a bank with no money, but he pledged to keep it independent.

Ibrahim Mahmoud, of Yemen’s Social Development Fund, said only an improvement in the country’s financial system and an emergency aid effort could stop the spread of hunger.

“If there is no direct and immediate intervention on behalf of the international community and state organizations, we could be threatened by famine and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Even though moving the central bank seemed to be aimed at hurting the Houthis, Yemeni economic officials and diplomats say the group has its own financial resources.

Losing out on $100 million in salaries to its fighters as suggested by the new bank governor may hurt the Houthis, but the bank’s closure in Sanaa is likely to hurt ordinary people already suffering from a collapse in the economy due to the war.

“It risks leaving the salaries of more than a million Yemenis unpaid. There may be a long-term effect on the Houthis, but the immediate effect will be on normal people trying to put food on the table,” Yemeni economic analyst Amal Nasser said.

(Additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Cost hampers drive to double number of children treated for starvation

Malnourished children wait for medical attention at the Halo health post in Halo village, a drought-stricken area in Oromia region in Ethiopia,

By Alex Whiting

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A drive to give six million severely malnourished children life-saving treatment every year by 2020 – twice the current number – will only succeed if governments prioritize it alongside other killers and treatment costs are cut, hunger experts said on Thursday.

The number of children treated for severe hunger has plateaued at just over 3 million in recent years, comprising a fraction of the 16 million who need it, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said.

“Severe acute malnutrition is a silent emergency,” said Diane Holland, senior nutrition advisor at UNICEF in New York.

“Greater advocacy around the issue is essential, so that governments, companies and civil society organizations mobilize and make treatment … a priority,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A child suffering from severe hunger is up to nine times more likely to die from malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, according to Saul Guerrero, director of nutrition for Action Against Hunger UK.

“The performance and impact of absolutely every intervention worldwide addressing malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea will be significantly enhanced if the children … are simultaneously treated for severe acute malnutrition,” he said from New York.

UNICEF and Action Against Hunger are part of a coalition which aims to double the numbers of children treated for extreme hunger.

No Wasted Lives also includes the European Union, UK government and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

Two thirds of children who are severely malnourished are in Asia, and a third in Africa. The majority of cases are in countries where there is no hunger emergency, UNICEF said.

Severe acute malnutrition is treated with a paste of peanuts and dried milk, which costs between $150 and $200 a child, but to boost the number of children on treatment, that price tag needs to drop to less than $100 per child, the coalition said.

Many of the treatments are made in Europe and north America.

So producing more treatments in countries where they are needed, finding cheaper but equally effective ingredients – perhaps chickpeas or sesame seeds – would help cut costs, Guerrero said.

Children also need treatment nearer home – at the moment many have to be taken long distances to a health clinic.

The coalition is proposing that community health workers who treat malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, are also trained in treating severe hunger.

No Wasted Lives was launched in New York on Tuesday. A high-level U.N. meeting on how to end hunger by 2030, is taking place in New York on Thursday.

(Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Nigerian army faces new dangers in Boko Haram campaign

* Extent of Boko Haram destruction becoming clear

* Ambush threat remains on roads to liberated towns

* Civilians continue to flee Boko Haram guerrillas

* Rains preventing assault on forest stronghold – army

By Ulf Laessing

BAMA, Nigeria, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s military has liberated large swathes of land from Boko Haram but a ride with an army convoy, all guns firing for fear of ambush, shows how far the northeast is from normality after a brutal Islamist insurgency that has displaced millions.

The moment military convoys leave the relative safety of Bama, Borno state’s second town, soldiers in the lead vehicle open fire with a heavy cannon into the scrub along the road to pre-empt attacks by remaining fighters from the Islamist group.

As they head for the regional capital, Maiduguri, the soldiers scan the road for bombs or booby-traps, while shooting at any possible cover – abandoned petrol stations, burned out farmhouses, trees, even clumps of elephant grass.

Jeep drivers behind them in the convoy join in, firing assault rifles indiscriminately through windows with one hand while gripping the steering wheel with the other.

“If there is somebody there and you fire at him, he definitely wants to fire back so then you know his position and take action,” said Colonel Adamu Laka, the military commander in Bama. “You are trying to seize the initiative.”

Such extreme measures highlight the lack of security across Borno despite the army’s success in driving Boko Haram out of occupied territory that 18 months ago was the size of Belgium.

Reuters was given access to the Nigerian army on the ground as it seeks to reimpose order in Borno after seven years of dominance by Boko Haram, one of the world’s deadliest Islamist groups and a major challenge to a government also grappling with an economic crisis caused by plunging oil prices.

As the first international reporting team to travel through the area by road since Boko Haram was pushed back, Reuters was able to see the devastation caused by the group. Roads are highly dangerous, no food is grown in the fields, and people are still trickling out of their hiding places in the bush.

The military campaign has curbed an insurgency that has killed at least 15,000 people since 2009 but in a new phase of the conflict, the army now finds itself facing small groups of guerrillas operating in the sparsely populated, wooded terrain.

In July, Boko Haram fighters hiding in trees along the Bama-Maiduguri road ambushed a United Nations aid convoy, wounding five people.

With the U.N. saying up to 5.5 million people in the northeast might need food aid this year, the military is under intense pressure to make roads safer. It is no easy task.

“There are so many ambush sites along the road so we are cutting the trees,” Colonel Laka said.

As Boko Haram has been forced back, the government and aid agencies have been able to assess for the first time the extent of the humanitarian disaster left in the jihadists’ wake.

Girls walk on a street in Maiduguri, Borno, Nigeria August 30, 2016. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said last month nearly half a million children were at risk of ‘severe acute malnutrition in the area around Lake Chad that has been ravaged by Boko Haram.

According to UNICEF, in Borno, where two in three medical centers or clinics had been partially or completely destroyed, 49,000 children will die this year if help does not arrive.

“Towns and villages are in ruins and communities have no access to basic services,” UNICEF said.

Describing civilians liberated by the army, Mohammed Kanar, northeastern coordinator for the national relief agency, said: “You will see them emaciated. As for an adult man, you can even count his ribs.”

The numbers could well rise as civilians emerge from the countryside into towns now controlled by the army.

“We had to leave the bush because we were hungry,” said Haja Jamil, 40, a pregnant yet painfully thin woman who arrived in Bama two weeks ago with two children.

“Boko Haram kept coming and hassling us. We are still afraid of them,” she said, sitting on the floor of a military clinic in Bama while feeding her 3-year-old daughter, Aisha.

DESERTED CITY

Since President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, took office last year, the army has found fresh resolve against Boko Haram, which has been fighting to establish a medieval caliphate in the southern stretches of the Sahara.

The military has moved its headquarters to Maiduguri, drafted in new generals and improved cooperation with neighboring countries, allowing it to capture and take control of dozens of towns such as Bama.

But the plight of Bama shows the extent of the challenge in recovering from the group’s scorched earth campaign.

Once a city of more than a quarter of a million people, Bama is now a ghost town, littered with burnt-out buildings and home to 11,000 people living behind military fortifications.

Goats nibble at grass growing in cracks in the road. Piles of rubbish fester in ditches. The main street is lined with fire-gutted banks and shops, walls daubed with graffiti in Arabic saying “God is Great.”

Before it left, the group, whose name means ‘Western education is sinful’ in the local Hausa language, also ransacked schools and the palace of Bama’s traditional ruler.

Now, soldiers camp in abandoned shops behind walls of sand-bags. Officers work in a tent, near a wall painted with the black flag of Middle East militant group Islamic State, to which Boko Haram pledged loyalty this year.

The army has set up makeshift classrooms for displaced children and piles of concrete blocks trucked in from Maiduguri point to hoped-for reconstruction, but the proximity of Boko Haram in the Sambisa forest – its final bolthole, according to the army – makes normality a distant dream.

“It’s just four or five kilometers from here. Once you cross the river you start meeting their checkpoints,” Laka said, pointing towards the forest on a tour of Bama’s outskirts in a bullet-proof jeep.

The fight against Boko Haram has been complicated by an apparent split in the group after Islamic State’s magazine announced Abu Musab al-Barnawi as new leader. The previous leader, Abubakar Shekau, appears to have rejected the move.

But dangers remain for the military and, above all, for young people. While Barnawi rejects Shekau’s strategy of suicide bombings in crowded areas, analysts think he could regroup in rural areas to stage targeted strikes against the army.

And both groups will be competing for recruits at a time when many displaced children are not in school. That will reduce their job prospects and leave them vulnerable to Islamists ready to exploit grievances over poverty and unemployment.

ANGER, AND HUNGER

For now, the military says Boko Haram is low on ammunition and food. Heavy rains have however prevented any advance into Sambisa, whose dirt tracks do not suit tanks and artillery.

“Once we go in with any equipment it’s difficult to operate. So we rely on foot patrols,” Laka said.

Meanwhile, everything from bread to ammunition to medicine comes in from Maiduguri by road, passing abandoned farms, deserted petrol stations, bombed mosques and gutted tanks.

Behind its fortifications, Maiduguri has become an oasis of safety that is choking under the pressure.

Its population over the last few years has almost tripled to 5 million, according to the national relief agency, causing shortages of everything from living space to food and cash.

Food price riots broke out twice in August, with crowds smashing cars outside one location until police restored order.

Many are desperate to go home, turning up at dawn at Maiduguri’s minibus taxi rank to take their chances on the Bama road, only to be turned back by soldiers on the outskirts of the city. Thousands are now trapped in Maiduguri.

“They have spent all their money and eaten all the food they brought,” said Mohammed Tada, sitting on the back of a truck laden with women, children and bags that had halted at a checkpoint. “All the people are suffering from hunger.”

(Editing by Ed Cropley and Giles Elgood)

Venezuela denies zoo animals starving, says one happy family

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s government denied on Monday that zoo animals were dying of starvation amid a national food shortage, saying they were being lovingly treated “like family.”

Minister for Ecosocialism and Water Ernesto Paiva toured Caricuao zoo in Caracas, where a union leader last week said 50 animals including Vietnamese pigs, tapirs, rabbits and birds had starved to death in the last six months.

“The animals are very dear, treated as if they were family, in fact they all have names,” said Paiva, adding that they were being seen by nutritionists to ensure they had an adequate diet.

The official said widespread media reports of deplorable conditions for zoo animals in the recession-hit OPEC nation were part of a campaign of “lies” against the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro.

A union leader for employees of state parks agency Inparques, which oversees zoos, and sources at various facilities have said animals are suffering across the country, with lions being fed mangoes instead of meat and bears receiving less than half of their required intake.

Despite the minister’s assurances that the Caricuao animals were healthy and adequately fed, state prosecutors are investigating the deaths of “various species of wildlife” there.

(Reporting by Daniel Kai; Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Sandra Maler)

Child hunger and death rising in Zimbabwe due to drought, charity says

By Katy Migiro

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Child hunger and deaths are rising in Zimbabwe due to the worst drought in two decades, with thousands facing starvation by the end of the year without additional aid, an international charity said on Thursday.

Southern Africa has been hard hit over the past year by drought exacerbated by El Niño, a warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which has wilted crops, slowed economic growth and driven food prices higher.

“This is an emergency,” Save the Children UK’s interim chief executive Tanya Steele said in a statement, after visiting Binga, on Zimbabwe’s western border with Zambia.

“Some children are already dying of complications from malnutrition.”

Mothers are foraging for wild berries and roots to feed their children, while going without food themselves for up to five days, the charity said.

The number of under-fives who have died of hunger-related causes in Binga town has reached 200 over the last 18 months — triple the usual rate, it said.

More than 60 million people, two thirds of them in east and southern Africa, are facing food shortages because of droughts linked to El Nino, according to the United Nations.

The U.N. World Food Programme estimates around 4 million people — one in three Zimbabweans — are struggling to meet their basic food needs.

The peak of the emergency is likely to be between October and March, the U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF) said.

Hundreds of young children across the country are being admitted to hospital for malnutrition each month, it said, while child neglect, abuse and child labor are on the rise.

HIV/AIDS is often one of the underlying causes of malnutrition in Zimbabwe, where 15 percent of adults are living with the disease, U.N. figures show.

The number of children suffering malnutrition is expected to rise sharply in the coming months, Save the Children said.

“Most of the severely malnourished children who receive no help are likely to die,” it said.

“Around half of these with moderate acute malnutrition could also perish without some form of intervention.”

El Nino ended in May but meteorologists predict a La Nina event, which usually brings floods to southern Africa, is likely to develop in the second half of this year,

Erratic, late rains in Zimbabwe led to a poor harvest in April, with some families suffering their second or third consecutive year of poor production, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET).

(Reporting by Katy Migiro; Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.)

Nigeria Children face death from hunger unless aid arrives soon

Children displaced as a result of Boko Haram attacks in the northeast region of Nigeria, cheer at a camp for internally displaced persons

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Tens of thousands of children in northeast Nigeria will die of malnutrition this year unless they receive treatment soon, the United Nations said on Friday after reaching areas of the country previously cut off from aid by Boko Haram violence.

Over the last year Nigeria’s army, aided by troops from neighboring countries, recaptured most of the territory that was lost to the militant group, which has waged a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in the northeast.

“Improving security has enabled humanitarians to access areas that were previously cut off,” Munir Safieldin, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria, said in a statement.

“The conditions we are seeing there are devastating.”

The conflict, which has killed more than 15,000 people and uprooted 2.4 million in Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon, has also pushed food insecurity and malnutrition to emergency levels in northeast Nigeria, according to the Nigerian government.

More than a half a million people need urgent food aid, as the violence has hit farming, disrupted markets and driven up food prices, several U.N. agencies said in a joint statement.

Almost 250,000 children under the age of five in Borno state will suffer from malnutrition this year, said Jean Gough, Nigeria representative for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

“Unless we reach these children with treatment, one in five of them will die,” she said. “We cannot allow that to happen.”

While the United Nations and its partners have gained access to several areas in Borno in recent months, it said many remain unreachable due to the ongoing violence and lack of security.

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) last week gained access to a camp in Borno’s city of Bama, hosting 24,000 people, including 15,000 children, for the first time since it was seized back from Boko Haram in March 2015.

More than 1,200 people have died from starvation and illness in the camp on a hospital compound, according to MSF, who said “a catastrophic humanitarian emergency” was unfolding in Bama.

Nigeria’s army last week said it had freed more than 5,000 people held by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram during an operation in the northeast of the country.

However, the jihadist group, which last year pledged loyalty to Islamic State, still regularly stages suicide bombings, mainly in crowded areas such as markets and places of worship.

(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

U.S. Convoy brings food to besieged Syrian town

A man rides a bicycle past a damaged building in Daraya, near Damascus

By Stephanie Nebehay and John Davison

GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – An international aid convoy reached the Syrian rebel-held town of Daraya overnight to deliver food supplies for the first time since 2012, when the town came under siege by government forces, the United Nations said on Friday.

Trucks from the United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent brought a month’s supply of food for 2,400 people, Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

Any sense of relief inside Daraya was short-lived, however, because the food supplies would not last a month and the U.N. had underestimated the number of people living there at present, the local council and a monitoring group reported.

The operation began late on Thursday and lasted several hours, Laerke said.

“They managed to get through all the checkpoints to get in there, deliver overnight, stock what needed to be stocked and provide food for the first time in years to people inside Daraya,” he told a news briefing.

Malnutrition has been reported in the rebel-held town, which is only 12 km (7 miles) from Damascus, where a first convoy with non-food supplies was allowed to enter on June 1.

U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura, speaking to reporters on Thursday, said President Bashar al-Assad’s government had approved U.N. land convoys to 15 of 17 government-besieged areas in June. Air drops remain an option if the convoys did not move, he said.

As well as wheat flour and other foodstuffs, health and hygiene items for Daraya’s estimated population of 4,000 were delivered overnight and will be distributed by Red Crescent workers, Laerke said.

“However of course we call for unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to all people in need, wherever they are, but in particular besieged and hard-to-reach areas where we have still about 4.6 million people living under these conditions in Syria,” he added.

Some 1.9 tonnes of medicines for chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes as well as antibiotics and vitamins, from the World Health Organization were on the convoy, spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.

‘SUPPLIES INSUFFICIENT’

However, the government did not approve delivery of three burns kits that would have been enough to treat about 30 people with dressings and pain killers, rejecting them from the approved list, Jasarevic said.

There was also anger and frustration at the insufficient amount of food aid delivered, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The British-based group tracks the war using sources on the ground.

It cited the Daraya local council as saying the supplies brought in would not last two weeks. The council says the population of Daraya is over 8,000, – more than double the U.N. estimates.

Council spokesman Hossam Ayyash said it was unclear how the aid, which would cater for only a quarter of the besieged population, would be distributed.

“Of course we are grateful to the team that brought in the supplies, but unfortunately they are not sufficient. We don’t know what decision will be taken (on how to distribute the aid), but it won’t be able to be shared out among everyone who’s here,” Ayyash said.

On Friday government helicopters stepped up their barrel bombing of Daraya, the Observatory and local council said. Daraya was reported to have been shelled last month after an aid convoy was turned away despite an agreement for it to enter.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Hyenas attack hungry women as Somaliland’s drought deepens

Women pray as they wait for assistance at Hariirad town of Awdal region, Somaliland.

By Emma Batha

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Somaliland risks descending into famine amid a severe drought that has killed thousands of livestock, an international aid agency warned on Friday, adding there were reports of some women being set upon by hyenas after collapsing from hunger.

“Many people are saying it’s the worst drought in memory,” said Mary Griffin, spokeswoman for Islamic Relief, who visited the region this month.

She said malnourished mothers were unable to breastfeed their babies, and herders were feeding cardboard boxes to their surviving animals because there was no grass left for grazing.

Adan Shariff Gabow, Islamic Relief’s manager for Puntland, neighboring Somaliland, said there were cases in Somaliland of women attacked by starving hyenas.

“They fell down, malnourished, and we understand they were then set on by the animals,” he said.

The United Nations says 1.7 million people – many of them nomadic – need aid in Somaliland and Puntland, Somalia’s two semi-autonomous regions in the north.

Griffin said there was a “terrible sense of deja vu” in the Horn of Africa where a 2011 drought in southern Somalia killed more than a quarter of a million people.

Aid agencies were criticized then for responding too late to warning signs.

Hany El-Banna, chairman of the Muslim Charities Forum, who also visited the region, called on the world not to repeat the same mistakes.

“We cannot wait like we did in 2011 when we acted too late,” he said. “We need to deal with this today – if we don’t this drought will turn into a famine.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

The drought has been caused by successive poor rainy seasons made worse by El Nino conditions in the Horn of Africa.

Thousands of goats and cows have perished and even camels – which are more drought-resistant – are dying.

Britain’s shadow development secretary Diane Abbott, who accompanied aid agencies on the trip, plans to raise the issue in parliament next week.

“I spoke to families who had 500 or more animals three months ago, and now are left with 20 or fewer,” she said.

“For people who rely on their animals for meat, milk and trade, it’s the equivalent of losing your entire life savings.”

The United Nations says malnutrition-related deaths have been reported in Awdal region, bordering Ethiopia, where sprawling makeshift camps have sprung up as people wait for aid to arrive.

Griffin who visited a camp at Qol Ujeed, in Awdal, said 1,200 people were living there without a single toilet. Many of their dead animals are buried around the camp.

Nimo Mohamed Abdi, a mother of three, described how she had lost all her livestock – more than 180 animals including camels – in three months.

“We were living by the coast then and the animals died so quickly, one after another, that we could do nothing with their corpses but throw them into the sea,” Griffin quoted her as saying.

The United Nations has launched a $105 million appeal.

Abbott said conditions that pastoral communities would expect to see every seven to 10 years were becoming an annual occurrence.

“With the increasing effects of climate change we need to look at how to build more resilience; more boreholes, dams, ways to collect and store rainwater.”

(Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)

Zoo animals starve in Yemen city shattered by war

DUBAI (Reuters) – Fighting, bombing and a blockade by militiamen of food and water that have killed hundreds of people in the southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz have not spared the animals of the local zoo.

But thanks in part to the work of an animal-lover a world away in Sweden, the beasts now have a better chance of surviving.

The feathered and furry denizens of the city zoo are slowly dying from starvation and untreated wounds before the eyes of helpless keepers, in another sign of suffering the impoverished country has endured in nearly a year of war.

King of the jungle no longer, one male lion is so emaciated that every bump in his spine pokes up and sores cover much of his body.

The critically endangered Arabian leopards which once stalked the verdant highlands are dropping dead from hunger. Zoo staff allow them to feast on their expired brethren – anything to keep them alive.

“When I first arrived, the scene was terrifying. Animals would be fed one day and not eat again for another five. They were bleeding, angry and would fight each other over any scraps to eat,” said one volunteer working at the zoo.

“It was a picture of hell on earth,” he added.

The man, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said the number of staff was down to just 17 – none of them had been paid in months and were working for love of the animals.

“They’re doing the best they can given the shortages,” he told Reuters.

Taiz is contested between local militias and the armed Houthi group which many residents say blocks aid from entering and bombs civilian targets. It is one of the worst fronts of the war, in which forces loyal to a government ousted by the Houthis in March are seeking to fight back to the capital Sanaa.

The Houthis say it is fighting extremist groups in Taiz and around the countries and denies blockading basic supplies.

Residents say the Houthis have repeatedly shelled hospitals and civilian areas, while their network of checkpoints around the city mean locals must smuggle in cooking gas and bread through rutted mountain passes.

A Saudi-led military coalition that backs the pro-government fighters bombs Houthi positions multiple times a day and residents live in constant fear of death.

Medics in the city say at least 1,600 people have been killed in the city since the start of the war. At least 6,000 people have been killed in Yemen, according to the United Nations, around half of them civilians.

ANIMAL-LOVERS

The some 280 animals in the zoo – 20 lions including 2 cubs, 26 Arabian leopards as well as Arabian deer, monkeys, porcupines, lynx, and eagles – have not been spared the trauma.

Eleven lions and six leopards have died. Those which survive pace in anguish in their cages and animals are at turns sullen and anxious.

Earlier this month, zoo workers posted pictures to social media posing in front of the stricken animals with signs reading, “SOS Taiz zoo, animals are starving.”

The appeal paid off and the scenes stirred hearts a world away in Malmo, Sweden, where bank worker and animal lover Chantal Jonkergouw helped start an online fundraising campaign to provide food and medicine for the crestfallen critters.

Almost $33,000 dollars was raised by the effort on generosity.com in less than two weeks and has already been put to use in paying staff, funding surgery on the lion’s open wounds and feeding the big cats – several donkeys a day.

“It touches me anytime I see animals caged, exploited or starving,” Jonkergouw told Reuters by telephone.

Acknowledging criticism that not just the animals but all of Taiz’s 240,000 people are in dire straits, she said she and her team of online organizers would stick to their mission.

“People caused this conflict. Of course there are innocent people in trouble as well, but humans can often flee or develop some kind of alternatives. It’s never the animals having this choice. It’s not fair, and we have an obligation to help them.”

(Editing by Sami Aboudi and Richard Balmforth)

In Yemen war, hospitals bombed to rubble, starvation spreads

DUBAI (Reuters) – Elderly Hamama Yousif was rushed to the main hospital in one of Yemen’s largest cities after an artillery round lashed her chest with shrapnel, only to find that the doctors there had run out of the oxygen tanks needed to save her life.

In a video captured by local news station Yemen Youth TV, worried relatives carry her, still talking, to almost every clinic and hospital in the war-torn city of Taiz – none had any oxygen – until motionless and dead, she was finally taken to the morgue.

Once known as “Arabia Felix” or happy Arabia, Yemen has been disfigured by 10 months of war into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, where over half the population faces hunger and not even hospitals are spared.

The wounded and the dying find little comfort in al-Thawra hospital in the southwestern city of Taiz: Pressure from nearby shelling has blown out all the windows and several direct hits have reduced one ward nearly to dust.

“Our situation is disastrous in every possible way,” said Sadeq Shujaa, head of the local doctor’s union.

“Shelling hit the only cancer hospital and the children’s hospital, shutting them down. The war has sent doctors fleeing for their lives to the countryside and siege tactics mean we have to smuggle in medicine through mountain passes.”

After the government fled into exile, a Saudi-led alliance of Arab states joined the war to restore it, recapturing the port city of Aden where President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi is now based.

Riyadh and its allies have launched hundreds of air strikes, sent in ground troops and set up a naval blockade to restrict goods reaching the country. The Saudis say the Houthis, drawn mainly from a Shi’ite sect that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in north Yemen until 1962, are puppets of Shi’ite Iran.

The Houthis have allied themselves with army units loyal to long-serving former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and say they are leading a revolution against a corrupt government in thrall to the foreign invaders. They deny receiving support from Iran.

STAGGERING CRISIS

The fighting has killed around 6,000 people, about half of them civilians. Many times more are now in danger as a result of the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by the conflict.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warns of a “staggering” food crisis, saying famine looms as over half the population or some 14.4 million people are food insecure.

“The economy shrank by 35 percent in 2015. People who used to have decent standards of living have become Yemen’s ‘new poor’ because with no electricity to power their business and no fuel to get anywhere, they have no way to earn money,” said Mohammed al-Assadi of UNICEF.

“2.4 million people are internally displaced. In these conditions there’s no easy access to basic hygiene or healthcare, and now about 320,000 children under five years old are severely malnourished,” he added.

On the outskirts of Sanaa and in towns outside Taiz, clusters of shabby tent encampments housing thousands of families fleeing nearby violence have cropped up, where jobless parents idle and many children shrivel with hunger.

In peacetime, impoverished Yemen imported 90 percent of its staple foods. Much of the 4 percent of the arid country that is arable land now lies untilled because of the war.

“Besides the humanitarian catastrophes, a lack of jobs paves the way for a social and political crisis in which work skills erode and some people join the war effort to earn a living, feeding a cycle of violence,” said Salah Elhajj Hassan of FAO.

HIDING IN CAVES

Workers from the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), among the few foreign aid groups operating in Yemen’s worst war zones, have suffered repeated attacks in the far northern province of Saada straddling the Saudi border.

An ambulance from an MSF-affiliated hospital rushed to the scene of a suspected Saudi-led air strike on Jan. 21, but just as crowds gathered to assist the victims another bomb fell and killed a medic.

An MSF hospital was bombed on Oct. 27 in what the Saudi-led coalition says was a strike intended to target militiamen nearby.

Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the foreign forces were working to reduce civilian deaths, but aid groups like MSF should prevent Houthi fighters from approaching their facilities.

As Yemeni society becomes increasingly militarized, combatants are often mixed among civilians. Rights group Human Rights Watch blamed Houthis for basing forces in a center for the blind in the capital that was bombed on Jan. 5.

The bomb did not explode, but rendered the facility unusable.

Days after the blast, a young boy with grey sightless eyes felt his way through the rubble and picked up a dead pigeon, in a moment captured by a local cameraman that has embodied for many Yemenis the sadness of the war.

Fear now reigns even where aid is available. MSF official Teresa Sancristoval said in a statement that most of the 40,000 residents in an area near an MSF hospital bombed on Jan. 10 now live in caves to avoid Saudi-led air strikes.

“Since the attack, there have been no deliveries in the maternity room – pregnant women are giving birth in caves rather than risk coming to the hospital,” she said.

(Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

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