Yemeni conjoined twins die
DUBAI: Conjoined twin boys born in Yemen who were in urgent need of treatment abroad died yesterday, the health ministry in Houthicontrolled Yemen said.
Doctors treating 2weekold Abd alKhaleq and Abd alRahim in the capital, Sanaa, had said the boys could not survive in Yemen’s warravaged health system and needed to be taken abroad.
But the airport in Houthicontrolled Sanaa has been closed to civilian flights since 2015 because the Saudiled coalition has control over Yemeni airspace.
Only UN planes can land there and reopening the airport is a key aim of peace talks that began in Stockholm in December.
A Saudi organisation, the King Salman Centre for Relief and Humanitarian Works, had been looking into how to get the boys abroad for treatment, Saudi state news agency SPA said last week.
The tiny boys had separate heads but a shared torso.
In a statement carried by the Houthirun Saba news, the health ministry said the deaths reflected the health and humanitarian situation Yemen’s children were living through as a result of the war.
Yemen’s almost fouryear war pits the Iranaligned Houthi movement against a Saudibacked coalition trying to restore the government of AbdRabbu Mansour Hadi after it was ousted by the Houthis in 2014.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, collapsed the economy and brought millions to the brink of famine. — Reuters