Sanaa, Mar 8 (IANS): Some 21 million people in the war-torn Yemen, or nearly 70 per cent of the total population, need life-saving humanitarian assistance, the Unicef said.

"This includes 11.3 million children or nearly 80 per cent of children," the UN agency said in a tweet on Monday.

In the country, nearly 400,000 children under the age of five are slipping from acute malnutrition to severe acute malnutrition, the humanitarian agency said.

According to the Unicef, Yemen remains one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world to date.

Since the civil war escalated in March 2015, tens of thousands of people have been killed, 4 million displaced, while the country remains on the brink of famine.

The Unicef said it requires $484.4 million to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen in 2022.

The war started when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.