An average of eight children are killed or maimed every day in Yemen as a direct result of the conflict that has gripping the country since April. A wave of airstrikes that began Thursday and continued Friday has killed more than 60 people, Yemen’s Houthi-run Health Ministry said.

“Nearly 1.5 million people are internally displaced. More than 1.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes”.

Witnessing the challenges first-hand, Cousin warned that the lack of immediate and unhindered access to people who urgently need food assistance and the shortage of funding will create the possibility of starvation for millions, mostly women and children, who are already suffering from hunger.

Hundreds of kilometres away in the Empty Quarter desert, a local official said unknown gunmen attacked a government military post in the Thamud district near Saudi Arabia, killing four soldiers.

The coalition – which backs exiled President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi and has been carrying out an air campaign against the Houthis rebels – has implemented a naval blockade of Yemen, requiring aid and trading vessels to seek individual permission to dock.

“As the conflict escalates, malnutrition – long endemic in Yemen – is posing an even more insidious threat to Yemen’s children”, proclaimed the United Nations agency. The conflict has involved Houthi rebel fighters clashing with forces loyal to the Yemeni government and its allies.

The Houthis, a Shi’ite Muslim sect traditionally based in Yemen’s north, still hold the capital Sanaa, which they seized last September.

Earlier, UN children’s agency UNICEF said at least 398 children have been killed in Yemen since conflict broke out this year, and another 605 injured. Over the past few days, loyalist forces, known as the Popular Resistance, have been mobilizing troops in Lodar, a town in Abyan Province near Bayda, in preparation for the attack.

While the attack is nominally headed by Saudi Arabia, the Obama administration has made it possible by providing coalition jets with midair refueling and both intelligence for targeting strikes and the bombs necessary to carry them out. This port had been the main location for receiving deliveries of emergency aid for the country’s northern provinces.

“We have right now, a ship sitting off the port of Aden that has materials in it that we could use in the south, and we’re still waiting for permission for that ship to come in”, a source said, adding that in order to access the rest of the country, all the ports must be open.