SANAA: Amal Hussain, a 7-year-old girl whose frail body touched millions globally to the famine and ongoing conflict waged by Saudi Arabia in Yemen has died, according to the New York Times.
Amal featured last week in a photograph by The New York Times‘s Tyler Hickswith is the latest victim of ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’ caused by the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition against Yemen, where 1.8 million children are starving due to a nearly four-year-old civil war.
Her haunting image of Amal with flesh so paper-thin that her collarbone and rib cage were plainly visible shared by tens of thousands of readers on social media. Amal, despite remaining unwell was discharged last week from hospital in order to make room for new patients.
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She died of acute malnutrition Thursday three days after she was discharged from the hospital in a refugee camp in northern Yemen, announced Amal’s family.
“My heart is broken,” Hussain’s mother, Mariam Ali, told the Times through tears is reportedly recovering from a bout of dengue fever. “Amal was always smiling. Now I’m worried for my other children.”
Yemen has a population of 30 million and 17 million Yemeni civilians are in desperate need of food aid as the country is at risk of a catastrophic famine, that would be the worst the world has seen for 100 years, the UN has warned.