Video: Saudi-aligned recruiters accused of luring Aden youth, minors to Lahj front lines

ADEN, Sept. 18 (YPA) – Human rights sources in the city of Aden have revealed that Saudi-aligned recruiters are luring young people and minors with small sums of money and sending them to battlefronts against Sanaa forces in western Lahj.

Raja Ali Ismail, head of the Women’s Department at the Aden Forum and Displaced Persons Forum, said in a video circulating on social media that recruiters affiliated with Saudi-funded Salafist groups have been operating in residential neighborhoods, offering young people and minors sums of no more than 500 Saudi riyals and transporting them by minibuses to front lines in Al-Mudharabah and Ras Al-Ara in western Lahj.

She clarified young people and minors are being taken from residential neighborhoods in Al-Khusaf, in the Al-Buraiqah area, and transported to what she described as death trap” without informing their families, who have no knowledge of their whereabouts.

She affirmed that the gang recruiting young people and children in Al-Khusaf is led by a person known as Abadel, calling on him to return the children to their families and holding Saudi-aligned leaders legally and humanely responsible.

She added that Saudi-aligned leaders are exploiting the financial hardship faced by young people, and urged families, residents, neighborhood elders and local community leaders in Aden to protect their children and prevent them from being sent to battlefronts on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

She stressed that young people and minors from Aden and other areas are not commodities to be bought and sold for Saudi riyals, and called for serious action to curb the practice of luring young people and minors into recruitment and to confront it decisively.

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