AMMAN/DUBAI: The death toll from a cholera outbreak is approaching 1,000 in Yemen, a war-devastated and impoverished country where “humanity is losing out to politics,” a senior U.N. official said Thursday. “Time is running out to save people who are being killed or being starved and now you have cholera as well adding to that complication,” said Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen.

“We are struggling because of the lack of resources. We need some action immediately,” he said at a news briefing in Amman, Jordan.

McGoldrick gave updated figures of more than 130,000 suspected cases of cholera and over 970 deaths, with women and children accounting for half of the numbers.

“What is heartbreaking in Yemen is that humanity is losing out to the politics,” McGoldrick said. He said a $2.1 billion humanitarian response plan for Yemen for 2017 had only been 29 percent funded.

The cholera outbreak on top of famine in Yemen was “an indication to how things are falling apart with only 50 percent of health services” operational.

“We need resources, we need money and we need them now to address the famine and to address the problems of cholera.”

Donors in April pledged close to $1.1 billion in aid to Yemen, which the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calls the “largest humanitarian crisis in the world.”

But only 25 percent of aid pledged to the U.N. refugee agency has been delivered so far, UNHCR’s Yemen spokesperson Shabia Mantoo said Wednesday.

Yemen’s war has seen more than 8,000 people killed and millions displaced since an Arab coalition intervened in March 2015 to support the government against Shiite Houthi rebels allied with Iran.

The Saudi state news agency SPA reported Thursday that one crew member was wounded when the Houthis fired a missile at a United Arab Emirates ship in the Red Sea, in the latest in a series of attacks on ships in the area.

SPA said the ship came under attack as it was leaving the port of Al-Mokha. The ship itself was not damaged. “One crew member was injured,” SPA said, citing a statement by the Arab coalition, without giving further details.

The Houthis had reported the attack earlier, broadcasting a grainy video of what Houthi-run media said was a missile being fired and then bursting into a ball of fire as it hit its target.

Al-Mokha was captured by the coalition from the Houthis earlier this year after heavy fighting. It lies close to the Bab al-Mandab shipping lane through which much of the world’s oil passes.

Several such attacks were reported since last year against Saudi, Emirati and U.S. ships in the Red Sea.