India, Sept. 26 -- Tarek al-Salami, aged 7, sat in a diaper, looking frail. Normally, the malnutrition and diarrhoea that weakened his tiny frame would have been treated within a few days, but nothing is normal in Yemen anymore.

Tarek's father carried him on foot from the southwestern city of Mokha as Iran-backed rebels swept in this month, bringing a return to civil war. The boy reached a hospital two days later in the government-held city of Aden, 270 kilometres away, but it said it had no beds. Like others, it was overwhelmed by the wounded. They finally found a therapeutic feeding centre. The boy arrived in "acute crisis" after the delay in care, according to the centre's director, Dr Arwa Atef, and he only began walking again on Wed...