Feature: Yemen’s children pay high price for Saudi military aggression
By Mona M.
SANAA, July 21 (YPA) – On the sounds of violent airstrikes in the northern outskirts of the capital Sanaa earlier this year, the wife of Faisal Ahmed gave birth to son.
“Trembling with fear from the aerial bombardment striking near our home, she was screaming in fear and pain… and suddenly she gave birth,” said Ahmed.
Ahmed, the father of nine children, had lost his job due to the war. He has since no constant income.
He said his wife was able to breastfeed her newborn son for about 20 days before her milk stopped, because of her malnutrition.
No electricity, no cooking gas, no water and no health access since the war erupted, the family has since relied on wood to cook food for, and the father couldn’t afford to buy his new son milk from the market.
The Yemeni children have been paying the highest price since Saudi-led aggression coalition launched a war on Yemen in March 2015.
The United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF has recorded the deaths of 900 children in 2007 alone, with more than 1,300 wounded – at the average of six killed or injured each day.
They have been killed or maimed across the country and are no longer safe anywhere in Yemen. Even playing or sleeping has become dangerous.
Meanwhile, nearly 320,000 children are at risk of life-threatening malnutrition in the country since the war began, according to UNICEF.
The US-backed Saudi-led aggression coalition airstrikes have killed more than 9,000 people, including more than 3,000 civilians, and displaced 2.3 million, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
Mona Sabella, an advocacy officer in the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies was quoted by nytimes daily newspaper as saying that “Many thought it is impossible to challenge Saudi impunity for war crimes in Yemen. The creation of an international investigative body becomes necessary today to prove that the lives of millions of the Yemeni people mean more than Saudi influence”.
The father Ahmed said his new son Odai was suffering from acute diarrhea and malnutrition. He took him to the hospital several times.
Odai is one of millions of Yemeni children paying high price for the this unfair Saudi military aggression on Yemen for more than three years.
Hundreds of medical facilities have been bombed by the coalition airstrikes, while few hospitals remain operating, depending on electricity generators despite severe fuel shortage due to the all-out blockade imposed by the forces of the coalition.
Odai was just one of an estimated 1.3 million children suffering from malnutrition in Yemen as the country’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen under relentless blockade and air strikes.
The US-backed Saudi-led aggression has destroyed storehouses, roads, schools, farms, factories, power grids, hospitals and water stations. The coalition forces also cut aid supplies to the country after it launched a major attack on the country’s lonely Red Sea port city of Hodeidah on June 13.