U.N. seeks $4.3 billion for Yemen to avert mass starvation as funding dwindles

FILE PHOTO: A worker carries a sack of wheat flour provided by the local charity Mona Relief to beneficiaries at a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen March 1, 2021. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

(Reuters) - The United Nations seeks to raise over $4 billion at a pledging event on Wednesday for war-torn Yemen where the humanitarian drive has seen funding dry up even before global attention turned to the crisis in Ukraine.

More than 17 million people in Yemen need food assistance and this could rise to 19 million in the second half of the year, U.N. bodies said.