10,200 kids dead, injured in Yemen’s years-long conflict, says UN

Sanaa, March 13 (IANS): The Unicef announced that 10,200 children have been killed or injured since the ongoing conflict in Yemen escalated nearly seven years ago.

“The actual number is likely much higher,” Xinhua news agency quoted Unicef’s Representative to Yemen Philippe Duamelle as saying in a statement.

“Following the intensification of the conflict in 2021, violence has continued to escalate this year and as always children are the first and most to suffer,” Duamelle said.

Just over the first two months of this year, 47 children were reportedly killed or maimed in several locations across Yemen, he added.

The statement noted that “violence, misery and grief have been commonplace in Yemen with severe consequences on millions of children and families. It is high time that a sustainable political solution is reached for people and their children to finally live in the peace they so well deserve”.

Last week, the Unicef had said that some 21 million people, or nearly 70 per cent of Yemen’s total population, need life-saving humanitarian assistance.

In the country, nearly 400,000 children under the age of five are slipping from acute malnutrition to severe acute malnutrition, the humanitarian agency said.

According to the Unicef, Yemen remains one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world to date.

Since the civil war escalated in March 2015, tens of thousands of people have been killed, 4 million displaced, while the country remains on the brink of famine.

The Unicef said it requires USD 484.4 million to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen in 2022.

The war started when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since the Houthi militia overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa, in 2014.