SHAFAQNA – More than 200 children have been killed since the start of this year in war-torn Yemen, a UN official said Monday.
“In 2017, 201 children killed in Yemen: 152 boys and 49 girls,” Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Resident Representative in Yemen, said on Twitter.
She said that 347 Yemeni children were maimed, including 113 girls, and that 377 boys were recruited in the ongoing fighting in Yemen this year.
The UN official’s statements came a few days after Saudi-led coalition kill 12 civilians, including children, in an attack in the northern province of Saada.
Relano said four girls and two boys aged between 2 and 14 years had been killed in the attack.
At least 1,546 children have been killed and 2,450 others injured in the three-year conflict in Yemen, according to UNICEF figures released in March.
Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to reinstate former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement. The Riyadh regime has, however, failed to reach its goals despite suffering great expense.
Over 3 million people have fled their homes since the onset of the conflict, and more than 20 million throughout the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).