UNICEF has also estimated that 2.2 million Yemeni children are malnourished, a quarter of whom are under the age of five. According to a UNICEF report released on 12 December, over 11,000 Yemeni minors have been killed in the Saudi-led coalition’s war on Yemen, which began in 2015.
Executive director of the UN agency Catherine Russell remarked that in addition to the thousands of casualties, thousands more remain malnourished and lack access to medicine, adding that the toll is potentially higher in reality compared to recorded statistics.
UNICEF has also estimated that 2.2 million Yemeni children remain malnourished. Despite of the UN-brokered ceasefire between the coalition and Sanaa, which was implemented in April and ended in October, hundreds of Yemenis have been killed by minefields, virus outbreaks, and militant ceasefire violations by the Saudi-led coalition.
Russell urged for the ceasefire’s renewal to “sustain peace” and allow the people of Yemen to rebuild their communities.
However the figures are thought to be much higher, UNICEF warned, with only UN-verified incidents recorded.
“Thousands of children have lost their lives, hundreds of thousands more remain at risk of death from preventable disease or starvation,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
The agency chief also called on the warring sides to renew the UN-brokered truce, which was announced in April and expired on 2 October without an agreement to extend it. While both sides have blamed the other for failure of a lasting ceasefire, the spokesperson for the Houthi movement, Mohammed Abdul-Salam said that “Peace in Yemen is not possible unless the invading countries abandon their arrogant mentality.”
“The urgent renewal of the truce would be a positive first step that would allow critical humanitarian access,” Russell said.
UNICEF is seeking nearly $484.5 million to respond to the crisis in Yemen over the next year and has warned that lack of predictable funding puts children’s lives and well-being at further risk.
It has also been reported that 62 children have been killed or injured by the coalition since the ceasefire’s implementation.
Last week, the leader of Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, accused Washington of intentionally preventing the further extension of the ceasefire agreement, calling the US “the root of the problem.”
Al-Houthi said: “The Americans, the Israelis, the British, and their regional puppets want Yemen to be occupied and submissive to them … The enemies want to set up their bases anywhere in Yemen, control its infrastructure and make the political field subject to their interests, to the extent that they choose who can be president or prime minister.”
This is in reference to the UAE’s construction of an airport in Yemen’s Taiz governorate, which will be used as a military base for the gulf state, however, the UAE claims it is a civilian airport.
The airport serves as a replacement for an Emirati base in Eritrea, which the Gulf country dismantled last year in a bid to strengthen its presence in Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition, as well as to avoid US suspicion. The base in Eritrea was also formerly used to launch air and sea operations against the Yemeni military.