The hunger crisis in Yemen threatens to become “absolutely devastating” as renewed fighting grips the country, the UN’s World Food Programme has warned, AFP reports.

The WFP said that unless the international community stepped up its efforts to help, the outlook was bleak.

“Hunger in Yemen today is accelerating before our eyes,” said Matthew Hollingworth, WFP’s assistant executive director for programme operations.

The latest flare-up “threatens to be absolutely devastating” for food security in the country, he told a press conference in Geneva, speaking from Rome.

“We are scaling up as the WFP, but we’re doing so with very limited resources and access to areas that we need to get into,” he said, warning that the crisis could compound “far beyond” Yemen’s borders.