The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed starvation of Yemen is producing the predictable, appalling results:

The UN children’s agency says 96,000 children are starving and close to death in the port city of al-Hodeidah.

Yemen’s civilian population has been starved of basic necessities for the last five months, and this has happened almost entirely because of the Saudi-led blockade that has mostly cut the country off from the outside the world. The U.S. not only endorses and aids the bombing campaign, but has assisted in enforcing the blockade. I know I’ve said this before, but it can’t be emphasized enough that the U.S. is actively supporting a war effort that is creating famine conditions in one of the world’s poorest countries. Because of the relatively limited coverage of the war and its effects, there is almost no awareness of this and even less outrage about what our government is helping the Saudis to do. Because it is being done by U.S. clients with our support, it gets far less attention and criticism than if it were being done by other governments.

This report refers only to the children close to starvation in one city, which doesn’t convey how many millions of lives are being put at risk all across the country. Some six million Yemenis all together are at the greatest risk of starvation, and even that figure doesn’t capture the extent of the country’s shortages of basic necessities. These people are being deliberately deprived of essential food, medicine, and fuel by the Saudis and their allies, and unless something changes now the Saudis’ war will be killing them just as surely as they were struck by a bomb or a shell.