“We’re very concerned about a very visible increase in acute malnutrition ​among children,” UNICEF’s Country Representative in Yemen, Akhil Iyer, ​told reporters in Geneva via video link from Aden.

More than ⁠a quarter of the nearly 2,900 children screened in recent ​weeks by UNICEF mobile nutrition teams in accessible areas were acutely ​malnourished, Iyer said, with 200 of those considered severe, the worst category.

Yemen’s civil war between Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iran-backed Houthis has sharply escalated after ​it had largely been frozen in a 2022 truce.

Violence has flared ​along old front lines in recent weeks, including around the southwestern city of ‌Taiz, ⁠as the Houthis swept south along the Red Sea coast, prompting a humanitarian crisis with over 133,000 people displaced and some fleeing to Africa across the Red Sea.

Over the past three weeks, around ​71,000 children have ​been forced from ⁠their homes due to the conflict, UNICEF said. Every day, UNICEF is recording more cases of child ​malnutrition in areas it can access where internally displaced ​people ⁠have recently arrived.

However, UNICEF said this was only a snapshot of the situation unfolding across the country, where 2.2 million children under five ⁠are projected ​to be acutely malnourished this year, ​with over half a million projected to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.