Seven children injured in Yemen

 Worried boy carried in a blue basket Worried boy carried in a blue basket Photo by Fateme Alaie on Unsplash

07 March 2021

Another episode of violence in Yemen: seven children injured by an artillery shell attack in Taiz city. 

The war in Yemen has hit hardest the most vulnerable: the children. On the 7th of March, Save The Children reported that seven children were injured in an artillery shell attack as they were leaving school in Taiz city. The latter, along with many other cities, has been the tragic scene of much violence against children in recent years,  due to what the  United Nations has defined as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”: a deadly combination of war, disease, economic collapse, and a breakdown of public institutions and services.

Indeed, the Taiz incident  comes three days after three children lost their lives and ten others were injured by artillery shells that hit their homes in the same area, bringing the total number of recent child casualties to 20, as reported by Save The Children. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) stated that “hostilities have directly caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties; 3,153 child deaths and 5,660 injured children were verified in the first five years of the conflict, and 1,500 civilian casualties were reported in the first nine months of 2020”. Finally, not only does the conflict continue to claim victims, but it also seems to have worsened over the years.

 In addition to the killings and deaths resulting from assaults on human rights, there are also deaths caused by hunger and the lack of medical and health facilities capable of treating the sick and injured: sources from the World Food Programme (WFP) state malnutrition rates among women and children in Yemen remain among the highest in the world, with 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women and 2.3 million children under 5 requiring treatment for acute malnutrition.

 

To know more, please read: 

https://www.savethechildren.net/news/children-%E2%80%98pay-highest-price%E2%80%99-yemen-war-says-save-children-seven-injured-while-leaving-school 

https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1078972 

https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/yemen 

 

Author: Benedetta Spizzichino; Editor: Eleonora Gonnelli

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