News / Yemen

Nearly 3,500 Yemeni children killed in Saudi airstrikes since 2015: Rights group

Monday, 07 September 2020 4:13 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 07 September 2020 5:01 PM ]

The file photo shows Yemeni children at a camp for displaced people in Yemen’s central province of Ma'rib.

Nearly 3,500 children have been killed in Yemen since 2015, when a Saudi-led military coalition started a devastating war against the impoverished country, a human rights group says.

In a report, carried by Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, Yemen’s Human Rights Center said on Monday that some 7,200 Yemeni children were either killed or wounded in the imposed war.

Of these ill-fated children, 3,468 were killed, further said the report, which was titled “Childhood with the Color of Blood and the Smell of Death.”

Citing reports by Yemen’s Health Ministry and the country’s media, the center added that 91 percent of the dead were those who had lost their lives in ceaseless aerial attacks by the invaders.

Lack of fuel shutting down Yemen’s health facilities as Saudi siege tightens: Health Ministry

The Saudi siege on Yemen is pushing all working health facilities in the impoverished Arab country toward total suspension due to the lack of fuel, the health ministry warns.

Supported militarily by the US, the UK, and several other Western countries, Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 to crush a popular uprising that had overthrown a regime friendly to Riyadh.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives in Yemen.

Yemen’s Human Rights Center further said on Monday that some 5,500,000 Yemeni children are also at the risk of catching diseases due to malnutrition and shortage of health services.

Late last year, Yemen’s health ministry warned that around three million children under the age of five were suffering from malnutrition, 400,000 of whom were suffering from severe malnutrition and were at risk of death every ten minutes if they did not receive appropriate medical care.

A child under 5 dies every 10 minutes in Yemen due to extreme hunger: Health minister

The Yemeni health minister says it is estimated that every ten minutes a child under five dies from extreme hunger in Yemen.

More than half of Yemen’s hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or closed during the war at a time when Yemenis are in desperate need of medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

At least 80 percent of the 28-million-strong population is also reliant on aid to survive in what the United Nations (UN) has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has also resulted in what the world body has described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

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