Famine Threat Looms over Yemen Population

Saudi Arabia's ongoing attacks in Yemen make banks to cut credit lines for traders shipping food to the war-torn country and now the population faces a famine threat.

The military aggression, which began in March last year, has turned Yemen's ports into battlegrounds, while the financial system is about to collapse, choking vital supplies to an impoverished country where 21.1 million people – or 80 percent of the population – are in need of humanitarian aid.

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Banking and trading sources said to Reuters that lenders are increasingly unwilling to offer letters of credit - which guarantee that a buyer's payment to a seller will be received on time - for imports to a country plagued by a civil war between the government and Houthi rebels as well as an al-Qaida insurgency. 

The Houthis, whose name means "Supporters of God," follow a similar ideology to Lebanon's resistance movement Hezbollah and played a prominent role during the ousting of dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011.

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However violence continues. On Saturday attackers killed 16 people, including 4 nuns, inside a Catholic facility from missionaries of Mother Teresa's charity in the port city of Aden. According to an official Vatican report, gunmen burst into the building. 

According to the United Nations more than 8,270 people, among them 2,236 children, have been killed and 16,015 others injured since the onset of the aggression.