Civilian deaths spike in Yemen Save the Children: This is a war on children
At least 349 civilians have been killed in Yemen’s Hodeida since June 13 when the Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive to take the strategic seaport.
Citing numbers collated by the monitoring group, ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data), Save the Children said on Monday that Hodeida accounted for 51 percent of all civilian casualties between June and the end of August, aljazeera.com reported.
At least 685 civilians had been killed across the country during that period, the organization added.
The offensive on Hodeida launched on June 12 by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is the largest battle yet in the three-year war that has killed more than 10,000 people.
The coalition ignored repeated warnings that the heavily defended Red Sea port under attack will trigger a food and humanitarian crisis in an impoverished Yemen.
The Saudi-led alliance intervened in Yemen in 2015 to restore former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The war has damaged Yemen’s infrastructure, crippled the health system and pushed the country to the brink of famine.
In the first five months of this year, there were an average 44 civilian casualties every month in Hodeida.
Between June and August, the figure jumped to a monthly average of 116, an increase of 164 percent, the charity said.
Save the Children spokesman Bhanu Bhatnagar lamented the situation, describing it as “dire”.
“We’re extremely concerned for the people who are trapped there but also for the welfare of people who have left their homes and are now living in makeshift shelters,” he said.
“There are many people who don’t have access to clean drinking water and so we could see another potential outbreak of cholera.
“The hunger crisis is also entirely manmade. More than three years of heavy fighting, the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas and the blockade have pushed millions of children to the brink of starvation.
“The people of Yemen are facing multiple threats because of this conflict. This should not be happening in 2018.”
Speaking from New York, where world leaders will gather for the UN General Assembly, Helle Thorningschmidt, CEO of Save the Children, described the situation in Yemen as a “war on children”.
“In the past few months, we’ve seen a shocking spike in violence – from an airstrike that hit a school bus full of children to a bombing near a hospital. Battles are being fought in densely populated urban areas and children end up trapped on the front line, risking death or life-changing injuries,” Thorning-schmidt said.
“This is a war on children. The world seems to be accepting an outrageous disregard for the conventions of war and children are paying the price.”
With logistic support from the US, the alliance has carried out more than 16,000 raids on Houthi-held areas in an attempt to reverse their gains.
These attacks have targeted weddings and hospitals as well as water and electricity plants, killing and wounding thousands.