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SAADA, YEMEN In explaining a much-lauded move, President Joe Biden said that the reason the United States was removing Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list was to avoid exacerbating the humanitarian situation in the war-torn country and to allow much-needed aid to reach local residents. Yet images of children with jutting ribs, swelling bellies, and loose skin that have come to symbolize the war for the past six years can still be found all over Yemen.
Four-year-old Gharam Sha’ib stands at a bed covered with blue sheets in Hayden Rural Hospital in the northern Governorate of Saada. She is bare-boned with haunting eyes wide open and the outlines of her ribs are clearly visible through her skin. The malnourished girl arrived at the hospital this week from the Al-Sumayk village in western Saada, an area far removed from the waves of famine that have washed over Yemen in the past six years.