From the day they were born, just seven weeks ago, twins Raghad Hassan and her brother Raad have been battling for survival. They came into the world prematurely, as fighting surged in Yemen's long-running civil war between Houthi rebel fighters and government forces. When the Houthis reached their village in the Kahboub mountains in south-west Yemen, their family of seven was forced to flee amid bombs, missiles, and drone attacks – the twins protected only by blankets.
What followed was three days on foot heading for the port city of Aden. "It was very difficult," says their father, Bajash Ali Sagir Hassan, a softly spoken shepherd. "We didn't find cars or transportation.
One kind person brought us here [on the fourth day] while others refused." As the family walked, the twins got weaker, according to their mother Lina. "They were exhausted… there was cold and dust. Their vomiting and diarrhoea got worse." By the time the newly homeless family arrived at al-Sadaqah hospital in Aden, the twins were barely clinging to life.
"Just skin and bone," said a doctor, shaking his head, as he looked at their wasted limbs. Raad was the sicker of the two - his ribs visible and his chest heaving as he took rapid, shallow breaths. He was barely bigger than the hands of the nurse who carried him gently to be weighed and measured.
Bajash looked on, worry etched on his face. He told us the twins were fed twice a day, but sometimes he could only give them water - after the war drove up the price of baby milk. The diagnosis came quickly - severe acute malnutrition.
That can be as deadly as a bullet. Malnutrition in Yemen is a crisis within a crisis - another frontline in a devastating civil war. Hunger did not arrive with conflict, but it's spreading with the latest bloodshed.
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