Locust plague begins to spread from Africa to Middle East and Asia
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Locusts swarming across eastern Africa have now made their way out of the continent, into the Middle East, and as far as India, Pakistan, and China, though authorities in east Asia say they are not yet worried about the locusts coming further inland.
The locusts have been devouring crops in an area of eastern Africa that encompasses Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, South Sudan, and Eritrea, able to consume an amount of crops in a single day that would feed 35,000 people in places where food shortages are already acute, experts say.
“Off the coast of Yemen and Oman there is a desert region with no water and last year they got hit by torrential rainfall then had two cyclones hit that very region,” CBN foreign correspondent George Thomas said of the swarm’s move eastward. “This is very unusual and those conditions gave rise and allowed these locusts to multiply by the millions.”
Iran has also been hit, according to new reports surfacing from that country, meaning the locusts have traversed an area stretching across much of the southern half of the ancient Silk Road trade route.
The areas across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia that have been affected by the locust swarm so far include seven of the top ten worst countries for Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s 2020 World Watch List.