Crescent International
The Najdi Bedouins in illegal occupation of the Arabian Peninsula are notorious savages. Even the UN agency, UNICEF has now confirmed this in its latest report on the first anniversary of the Saudi-led assault on Yemen. UNCEF reports that children are the principal victims of Saudi barbarism. Nothing is safe in Yemen: hospitals, schools, playgrounds, houses and even open air markets where civilians go to buy food.
New York, crescent-online.net
Tuesday March 29, 2016, 15:49 DST
A scathing report released by the United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) has said children are the principal target of Saudi attacks on Yemen, the region’s poorest country.
UNICEF warns some 320,000 children risk severe malnutrition as 82 percent of population requires humanitarian aid.
The UNICEF report, titled "Childhood on the Brink", says nearly a third of the more than 3,000 civilians killed in the Saudi-led war on Yemen have been children. The UNICEF figures of dead are grossly under-reported. The actual death toll is more than 8,000 but it is clear that children—the most vulnerable segment of the population—face the greatest risk.
The UN Children’s body further said that six children are killed or injured on a daily basis in Yemen. This is seven times higher that figures compiled for 2014.
"Children are paying the highest price for a conflict not of their making. They have been killed or maimed across the country and are no longer safe anywhere in Yemen. Even playing or sleeping has become dangerous." This was stated by Julien Harneis, UNICEF's representative in Yemen.
According to the UN agency, nearly 10,000 children under five may have died in the past year from preventable diseases, as a result of the decline in access to vaccines and other key health services. This is the direct result of Saudi-led attacks on Yemen’s infrastructure including hospitals, other healthcare facilities and schools.
The Saudi regime led by Najdi Bedouins has perpetrated horrific crimes against defenceless civilians in Yemen. On March 15, Saudi-led coalition planes attacked a market in Haja province and murdered more than 60 civilians. When international condemnation intensified, the Saudi regime announced it would launch an inquiry into the killings.
Basic services and infrastructure are "on the verge of total collapse," the UNICEF report said. It found that 63 health facilities have been attacked or damaged over the past year.
The UN agency also estimates that 82 percent of the population is now in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Further, nearly half of Yemen's 22 provinces are on the verge of famine in a country already desperately poor.
Alarmed by these crimes, there are international calls to charge Saudi rulers with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Similarly, people across the world are demanding a halt to the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Sweden has already announced it will not sell weapons to the Saudis and the Dutch parliament passed a bill calling for terminating sales to the medieval regime.
For more than a year, the Saudis and their equally savage allies in the region have been bombing dirt-poor Yemen. Apart from killing a large number of civilians and destroying much of the country’s infrastructure, the aggressors have failed to achieve their political or military objectives.
Militarily, they want to snatch areas under the control of Ansarallah fighters. This has not been achieved. Nor have the aggressors been able to install the puppet Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi back in power in Yemen who continues to hide in Saudi Arabia.
Instead, the Saudis have been forced to agree to a ceasefire with the Houthis and their Ansarallah militia that is supposed to go into effect on April 10. Should that materialize, there will be peace talks in Kuwait on April 18.
These are still very much up in the air but the fact that the Saudis agreed to a prisoner swap with the Houthis on March 28 indicates the Najdi Bedouins have begun to see their folly. They also seem to have realized the hopelessness of their situation.
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This reader appreciates Crescent’s coverage of the Yemenis’ suffering that regrettably has been largely ignored by others.
