Yemen: Donated UN food aid for the most needy sold in markets to boost stallholders’ profits
A Sky News team inside Yemen has discovered shocking evidence that donated UN food aid meant for the most needy is instead being sold in street markets to help boost stallholders’ profits.
We found that donated cans of vegetable oil with World Food Programme (WFP) stamps on them were among the essential food items being sold in the province of Hodeidah. Alongside the WFP stamp, there were clear signs in English on the can saying “not for sale”.
In the same market stall in al Khokha, our investigations revealed sacks of flour and rice, also with large lettering saying “not for sale”, which appeared to have been donated by aid agencies from South Korea.
Warning: This article contains images some may find distressing
When we confronted the shopkeeper, he at first denied he was selling donated food aid. He then tried to hide the incriminating World Food Programme cereal packets that we had spotted on his counter.
This vegetable oil clearly says ‘not for sale’
Sacks of flour and rice, with large lettering saying ‘not for sale’, have also been found
When we continued to press him and drew attention to large supplies of the donated cereal at the back of his store, he admitted he knew he was not meant to be selling the donated goods.
He then insisted he would halt the practice that day – an assurance which few who heard him actually believed, given the large stock of donated aid he had in his small store.
But he insisted that he was certainly not the only stallholder selling food aid – and that he was fulfilling a “service” to desperate villagers.
“People come to me who have received the food aid but they need to sell it to me so they can buy medicine for their children. They sell it and I buy it in an emergency,” he attempted to explain.
This shopkeeper at first denied he was selling donated food aid
He later insisted he was certainly not the only stallholder selling food aid
Our investigation comes as the United Nations latest figures showed that children are the biggest victims in Yemen’s eight-year-old war.
According to UN figures, a child dies in Yemen every 10 minutes from preventable causes. That is a staggeringly high number of unnecessary deaths.
There are an estimated 11 million children who are identified as needing humanitarian aid in Yemen.
We are the first foreign journalist team inside Yemen since Iran and Saudi Arabia announced a dramatic breakthrough which has taken the country the closest it has got to possible peace in the eight years of conflict.
What we’ve discovered is both heartbreaking and shocking.
Ahad emaciated and weak
We saw a three-year-old little girl called Ahad being brought into a remote, basic clinic in al Khokha to try to get help.
Ahad is literally starving to death
Her ribs were protruding through her stretched skin. Her eyes were huge in the centre of a gaunt face and her limbs seemed massively elongated because of the lack of muscle or fat anywhere on her body.
She weighed just 3kg – at three years of age – that’s less than what an average newborn weighs fresh out of their mother’s womb.
Ahad couldn’t stand or sit because she was so emaciated and weak. She has Down’s syndrome too which is rarely seen here and the nurses who’re trying to care for her seem powerless to stop her slow inexorable decline. She is literally starving to death.
She’d only relatively recently been discharged from the small field hospital which operates here – just 10 days ago when she’d reached 4kg. In less than a fortnight, she’d dropped a kilo that she simply cannot afford to lose and which could cost her life.
Her father Saeed Saleh told us: “She just keeps bringing up the food we give her. She can’t seem to keep anything down.”
The tragedy for Yemen is that she is certainly not a rare case. At the same time as Ahad was being re-admitted, a six-month-old baby boy called Abdullah Mohammed Abdullah was crying in the arms of his 16-year-old mother.
As she rocked him backward and forward and tried to comfort her baby boy, the nurses noted she too looked malnourished.
She was certainly struggling to breastfeed. That could have explained why her little boy was a mass of skin and bone with the same huge starving eyes peering out from a skeletal face and body where the line of every rib can be clearly seen.
Read more:
Victims of forgotten war
There seems to be desperation and starvation everywhere. At the al Jasha camp for internally displaced people (IDP), there are nearly 9,000 people living in squalor. It is a place where only misery is guaranteed.
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What’s happening in Yemen?
Within seconds of us arriving, we were surrounded by angry people begging us for help and insisting in loud voices they were desperate and they were hungry.
“We don’t have anything to eat. Not even a little bit of rice. Nothing. We are suffocating, we are dying,” one man yells.
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Yemen: ‘We can never do enough’
The UN humanitarian chief recently warned that essential aid programmes were being closed down because of funding cuts and food rations had been reduced for eight million people in Yemen.
For a country in the grips of a humanitarian catastrophe it’s a bleak and terrifying future for millions.
Alex Crawford reports from Yemen with Middle East editor Zein Ja’far, cameraman Jake Britton and Yemen producer Ahmed Baider
Outgoing US President Joe Biden is set to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping today for what is likely to be his last time as US president.
The two leaders are expected to hold talks on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in the Peruvian capital, Lima.
It comes against the backdrop of increasing tension in the US-China relationship with a potential trade war looming under a Trump presidency, several China hawks tapped for US cabinet positions and China’s growing status among global south countries as an emerging leader of an alternative world order.
This week China was focused on events in the southern city of Zhuhai.
First there was a car ramming attack at Zhuhai’s sports stadium which left 25 people dead. A shocking event that was heavily censored in China.
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What happened at Zhuhai sports centre?
Less than an hour’s drive away the country was holding its premier air show.
It was a military enthusiast’s dream, and not even intermittent rain could keep the crowds of tens of thousands of people away from relishing in the roar of jets in the skies above Zhuhai.
China’s fighter jet fleet
One of the main drawcards was China’s newest stealth fighter the J-35A. It will join the country’s J-20 in service for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF).
A J-35A stealth aircraft flies during the exhibition. Pic: Reuters
The J-10C was China’s aerobatics star of the show. There were daily displays of its prowess in sky-high manoeuvres and formations that impressed onlookers, leaving a streak of colours across the cloudy rain-clogged sky.
China’s aerobatic team
China’s military modernsiation programme is continuing apace
It boasts the largest navy in the world and the largest armed forces by active-duty personnel.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Airforce is developing fast too.
Dr Nicole Leveringhaus, a China security expert from King’s College London, says: “China started with very little. It was devastated by wars on many fronts in the 30s and 40s. Its defence industry was depleted. In 70-plus years it’s built itself up and now we’re seeing the results.
“It’s an impressive feat to go from a bloated land-based peasant guerrilla army to what it has to today.”
Chinese pride and nationalism on display
Enjoying the air show spectacle, military fan Liu Liansong said: “I think the air show is great. It is a firm manifestation of the air force’s development from scratch. We as Chinese people feel very proud.”
Inside the air show
The air show included massive exhibition halls of military hardware, from drones to robotics, firearms and mock missiles. Merely getting from one end of the venue to the other through densely packed crowds was a mission.
Russia in the air
The other crowd puller this week was Russia’s aerobatic air force unit, performing daily theatrics at dizzying speeds.
It is another sign of the deepening ties between China and Russia.
Russia’s aerobatic team shows off for the crowd
One Russian tourist and recreational pilot, Yulia, told Sky News: “Both sides are looking for good communication in business, aviation and in many spheres including tourism.”
The secretary of Russia’s security council and former defence minister Sergei Shoigu also visited the air show, viewing both Chinese and Russian-made jets.
In Beijing, secretary Shoigu was quoted by Russian state media as saying: “I see the most important task as countering the policy of ‘dual containment’ of Russia and China pursued by the United States and its satellites.”
One of Russia’s jets up close
The West is increasingly frustrated by China’s support of Russia. The US has sanctioned two Chinese companies, accusing them of being involved in the production of Russian aerial drones used on the battlefield.
China insists it is not supplying weapons to Russia.
One of the companies, Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co, had a small stand in one of the exhibition halls. Its representatives declined Sky News’ request for an interview.
Tariff war brewing
Despite the raw military might on display in Zhuhai, in China there is uncertainty and unease about what an impending Donald Trump presidency will mean for global trade.
President-elect Trump has threatened blanket tariffs of up to 60% on Chinese products exported to the US.
This would be a serious blow to China’s target GDP growth and comes at a time when the country’s economy faces deep-set challenges.
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At the other end of the country, in Beijing analysts are weighing up the impact of possible tariffs and the Chinese government’s options to respond.
Senior Asia analyst Chim Lee, from The Economist Intelligence Unit, is not optimistic that a US-China agreement to minimise the damage can be reached.
Senior Asia analyst Chim Lee
“I think both sides have recognised that the era of making deals is passed,” Mr Lee said.
“We’re going to see China starting with some targeted measures, tariffs it feels more comfortable to impose,” he explained. “But there are also areas where China is starting to be a bit more aggressive.”
This action could include export controls on China’s production of critical minerals and retaliatory tariffs on US agriculture exports.
Trade competition, military posturing and complicated geo-political alliances have set the stage for a challenging next phase in US-China relations.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
Read more:
Who is in Trump’s top team?
Trump’s cabinet signals tough stance on China
Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
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