Yemen President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi yesterday told Tehran to stop meddling in Yemeni affairs after the defense ministry said the authorities had uncovered what it called an Iranian espionage network.

“An Iranian spy network that had been operating in Yemen for seven years under the leadership of a former leader in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards” has been dismantled, the ministry’s news website 26sep.net reported.

It said the network was “conducting espionage operations in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.”
The state news agency Saba quoted Hadi as saying: “We wish our brothers in Iran would stop meddling in Yemen’s affairs and consider the delicate period Yemen is going through. Leave Yemen alone. Enough.”

In another development, the UN World Food Programme has warned that one million Yemeni children face severe malnutrition within months as families struggle to pay for food in the country.

Economists and aid groups said the price of basic commodities such as rice jumped by as much as 60 percent.

"Even graver than the situation of food security is clearly the nutrition situation where we estimate that potentially one million children are at the risk of becoming acutely malnourished in the coming months," WFP Deputy Executive Director Ramiro Lopes Da Silva told Reuters.

"Whilst we have a food security issue, you have food in the markets. So, the issue is not an issue of availability, the issue is an issue of access because a large segment of the population does not have the purchasing power," he said.

Severe, or acute, malnutrition is marked by severe wasting in children, according to the World Health Organization. If the condition worsens, it could lead to death.