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Current Affairs

Yemen family eats tree leaves as aid dies out

With no food aid, 65-year-old Saeedah Mohammed heads out with a plastic bag to pick tree leaves near her displacement camp in southern Yemen, before…

By Samantha Johnson / May 24, 2026

With no food aid, 65-year-old Saeedah Mohammed heads out with a plastic bag to pick tree leaves near her displacement camp in southern Yemen, before serving them to her grandchildren to stave off hunger.

Behind the camp wooded hills stretch under a clear sky, while on the ground, yellowed and stony earth is strewn with rubbish.

Amid the trash and destitution, daily life manages to organise itself, however imperfectly.

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Worn-out clothes dry on lines strung between spindly trees, and two old discarded tyres lie in the dust.

In Al-Manij camp near Taez in southwest Yemen, Mohammed lives in a makeshift tent with her two divorced daughters and their six children.

Displaced Yemeni woman Saeedah Mohammed boils tree leaves to feed her grandchildren. Photo: AFP
Displaced Yemeni woman Saeedah Mohammed boils tree leaves to feed her grandchildren. Photo: AFP

Aid from the World Food Programme (WFP), on which her family depended, stopped more than six months ago.

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