A 'living hell' for children

• Hundreds of thousands of lives at risk as key rebel supply route cut 
• US says Saudi, UAE working to cut risks to Yemen civilians
• In U-turn, Spain to deliver laser-guided bombs to Saudis

Yemen's humanitarian situation has worsened rapidly since UN peace talks collapsed endangering hundreds of thousands of lives especially the children.

“The situation has deteriorated dramatically in the past few days. Families are absolutely terrified by the bombardment, shelling and airstrikes,” the UN humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande said in a statement.

Yesterday, the Saudi-led military coalition attacking Houthi rebels seized the main road into the strategic port city of Hodeida, weakening Houthi control over the supply of humanitarian aid into the country.

“The mills in Hodeida feed millions of people,” Grande said. “We're particularly worried about the Red Sea mill, which currently has 45,000 metric tonnes of food inside, enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month. If the mills are damaged or disrupted, the human cost will be incalculable,” she said.

And the war’s largest victims are children.

In the malnutrition ward of a hospital in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, doctors weigh toddlers with protruding rib cages and skeletal limbs.

Twenty children, most under the age of two, being treated at the ward in Sab'een Hospital are among hundreds of thousands of children suffering from severe malnutrition in the impoverished country that has been ravaged by a more than three years of war.

"The conflict has made Yemen a living hell for its children," Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen, told Reuters.

She said more than 11 million children, or about 80 percent of the country's population under the age of 18, were facing the threat of food shortages, disease, displacement and acute lack of access to basic social services.

"An estimated 1.8 million children are malnourished in the country. Nearly 400,000 of them are severely acute malnourished and they are fighting for their lives every day."

A coalition of Sunni Muslim Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, intervened in Yemen's war in 2015 against the Iranian-aligned Houthis after they drove the internationally recognised government out of the capital Sanaa.

The war has unleashed the world's most urgent humanitarian crisis in the nation of 28 million, where 8.4 million people are believed to be on the verge of starvation and 22 million people are dependent on aid.

The coalition has imposed stringent measures on imports into Yemen to prevent the Houthis from smuggling weapons but the checks have slowed the flow of commercial goods and vital aid into the country.

"The situation of the families without jobs, without income and in the middle of the war, is catastrophic," Relano said.

"The human cost and the humanitarian impact of this conflict is unjustifiable," Lise Grande said in a statement yesterday.

"Parties to the conflict are obliged to do absolutely everything possible to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and ensure people have access to the aid they are entitled to and need to survive."

Amid criticism of Saudi-led campaign, Spain yesterday said it will go ahead with the controversial delivery of 400 laser-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia.

And US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has "certified" that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are working to reduce risks to civilian life in Yemen .

The measure comes amid a string of high-profile coalition strikes that have killed scores of civilians, many of them children.