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UN blacklists Saudi, Israel for killing children

SHAFAQNA- A Saudi-UAE-led military coalition has been blacklisted by the United Nations for a third year over killing or injuring  729 children during 2018, accounting for nearly half the total child casualties, Antonio Guterres said in the annual report submitted to the Security Council on Friday.

The figure accounts for nearly half of the total child casualties in the war-torn and impoverished country.

The UN said it verified 1,689 child casualties in Yemen last year, including the killing of 576 and the maiming of 1,113.

The toll was “often a result of attacks in densely populated areas and against civilian objects, including schools and hospitals”, Guterres said.

Guterres also reported that the highest number of Palestinian children had been killed or injured last year since 2014, mainly by Israeli forces, though no parties were blacklisted in the annex to the annual Children in Armed Conflict report, seen by Reuters.

The Children in Armed Conflict report also blamed Israel for the death of 56 Palestinian children and the wounding of 2,674 last year, the highest number in four years. Israel was not blacklisted, however.

The report has long been controversial with diplomats saying Saudi Arabia and Israel both exerted pressure in recent years in a bid to stay off the list.

The coalition had been briefly added to the blacklist in 2016 and then removed by Ban pending review. At the time, Ban accused Saudi Arabia of exerting “unacceptable” undue pressure after sources told Reuters that Riyadh threatened to cut some U.N. funding. Saudi Arabia denied threatening Ban, Reuters told.

Last year, “verified cases of the killing and maiming of children reached record levels globally” since monitoring began in 2005, said Guterres. A total of 24,000 “grave violations” against children was documented in 20 countries, with Afghanistan and Syria topping the list of countries with the most child casualties in armed conflict.

“In Afghanistan, the number of child casualties remained the highest such number in the present report (3,062) and children accounted for 28 percent of all civilian casualties,” the report said.

“In the Syrian Arab Republic, air strikes, barrel bombs and cluster munitions resulted in 1,854 child casualties”, Aljazeera reported.

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