SANAA, Oct 24 (NNN-XINHUA) – More than 5,000 Yemeni children have been killed or injured, since the war erupted between the Saudi-backed exiled Yemeni government and Iran-allied Houthi rebels, in Mar 2015, the representative of the UNICEF in Yemen said.
“The escalating conflict forced nearly half a million Yemeni children out of school,” Sara Beysolow Nyanti told reporters, at a ceremony in the capital, Sanaa, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
“The situation of Yemeni children is very miserable,” she said, calling on all Yemeni parties, to immediately end the war and move towards peace.
The UNICEF would release updated statistics of Yemeni child victims of the war in Nov, Nyanti noted.
An estimated two million children in Yemen are currently suffering from acute malnutrition, including 360,000 under five years old, according to recent UNICEF reports.
In the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, 24.1 million people, or nearly 80 percent of the population, require some form of humanitarian assistance.
Yemen is suffering a long-running civil war between the government and Houthi rebels, which humanitarians said, has brought the country to the brink of famine.– NNN-XINHUA