130 children are dying every day in Yemen from starvation and disease

An estimated 130 children or more die every day in Yemen from starvation or disease, the international aid group Save the Children reported late Wednesday. By the end of the year, an estimated 50,000 children will have died from the "preventable" causes, Save the Children's Yemen director, Tamer Kirolos, told The Independent.

That number means "more than a hundred mothers [are] grieving for the death of a child, day after day," Kirolos added.

The shocking toll stems in part from the war-torn country's massive cholera outbreak, the largest in modern history. An estimated 600,000 people or more have been infected by the disease since April.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

An estimated 385,000 children in Yemen are additionally suffering from severe acute malnutrition, The Telegraph reports. A blockade on Yemen's ports by Saudi Arabia made food in the famine-struck nation even scarcer, and Save the Children warns that the numbers reported Wednesday could already be outdated since they were gathered before Saudi Arabia's maneuver. The kingdom said Monday it would ease the blockade after extreme international pressure.

America's role in allowing the Saudi Arabian blockade, though, is "precisely the kind of thing that fuels furious anti-American hatred and terrorism," Ryan Cooper writes at The Week. Read more here.