Cairo : Almost 80 per cent of Yemeni people need urgent humanitarian aid, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN said in a report on Thursday.

The report, presented in Cairo, stressed that Yemen was suffering the worst famine in the Middle East and North Africa.

FAO added that almost a quarter of the Yemeni people were suffering severe food insecurity while 36 per cent of the population faced moderated food insecurity, Efe news reported.

The severe malnutrition index between children under five years of age reached 11 per cent but surpassed 15 per cent in at least four Yemeni provinces. The FAO regarded this situation as critical.

Sanitary services degraded leading to a cholera epidemic, which resulted in at least 2,028 deaths with nearly 580,000 suspected cholera cases.

The water supply also degraded due to the war prompting violence.

The FAO said 4,000 violent deaths took place in disputes over water or lands annually, citing the Yemeni Interior Ministry.

The conflict in Yemen erupted in late 2014 when the Houthi rebels gained control of the capital Sana’a and much of Yemen’s northern provinces.

The Yemeni conflict gained an international dimension when a Saudi-led coalition started to target Houthi rebels in March 2015.

In another regional issue, the FAO stated that war-torn Syria needed between $11-17 billion to recover garden patches and its agricultural infrastructures.

The report added that food production reached some of the lowest levels in Syria prompting problems in supplying near half of the population in Syria with food.

—IANS