THE UNITED NATIONS warned on Tuesday that 7.6 million Yemenis were “one step” from famine as the Saudi-backed civil war faction walked out of peace talks.

Ousted president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s foreign minister Abdul-Malik al-Mekhlafi said his delegation had left the talks in Kuwait over presidential pretender Ali Abdullah Saleh’s insistence on a power-sharing government.

The Saleh delegation also objected to the Hadi team’s controversial nomination of fugitive Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar to head the proposed transitional military committee.

“Hadi is responsible for the [Saudi-led] assault on Yemen,” said Saleh delegation spokesman Abdel-Rahman al-Ahnomi. “He has no legitimacy.”

Yemen has endured more than a year of bombing raids — escalating into a ground invasion — as the Saudis’ coalition of nine regional countries tried to reinstall Mr Hadi, who was deposed by Mr Saleh’s backers the Houthis in September 2014.

But the coalition has failed to budge from Yemen’s capital Sanaa the de-facto government of former president Mr Saleh, supported by the armed forces and the Houthis.

UN humanitarian operations director John Ging, who had just returned from Yemen, said there had been “a shocking fall off” in support from international aid donors over the last few months.