Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday $500 million in aid to war-torn Yemen, supporting more than 10 million people facing a food crisis.
The programme was announced by Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Rabeeah, general supervisor of Saudi Arabia's King Salman Center for Humanitarian Relief and Works, at a joint press conference in Riyadh with Reem al-Hashimy, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation.
Rabeeah added that donations will go through the United Nations as well as other international and local aid groups.
The latest aid package comes after the two countries and Kuwait offered $1.25 billion to the UN's humanitarian response plan in Yemen for 2018, according to Rabeeah.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in the Yemen war in 2015 to bolster Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi after Iran-backed Houthis took over the capital Sanaa.
The World Health Organization says nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the coalition intervention in March 2015.
The war in Yemen -- already one of the world's most impoverished countries -- has left the nation on the edge of mass starvation in what the UN calls the worst humanitarian crisis.
The UN is already providing food aid to some eight million Yemenis but that number could reach 14 million next year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week.
.jpg?w=600)
