The Yemen Tragedy Further Fueled by the West and Its Allies

Viktor Mikhin
New Eastern Outlook

A most sophisticated demagogy, blatant falsifying of facts, impudent interpretation of events with everything going upside down, these are the thoughts that come to one’s mind when one reads another forgery concocted in the West. We mean the statement addressed to Iran calling for the termination of the actions which are allegedly destabilizing the situation in the Persian Gulf. The statement was made by the governments of the US, the UK and their satellites: the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, on June 24, as reported by the US Department of State press service. In this manifesto, contrary to the obvious facts, the signatories held Iran responsible for the escalation of the situation in Yemen and the attacks on the oil tankers on May 12 and June 13, urging the Islamic Republic to start searching for a diplomatic solution. The intensity of this demagogy, as the saying goes, is beyond the scale.

Let us however, in a quiet fashion and on the basis of the obvious facts, consider the situation in the Persian Gulf area and ask several questions. Did Iran or the poor Yemen suffering a score of internal problems, indeed attack Saudi Arabia? Did the Houthis indeed create a so-called Arab coalition which has consistently bombed the Saudi cities and villages killing the civilians? By no means. It was the Saudis, namely the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud who took up the foreign policy responsibilities due to the old age and numerous diseases of his father, the King, and who gave the order sanctioning the rough intervention of Riyadh in internal affairs of the neighboring state of Yemen and the total bombing of the Yemen cities.

The leader of the Houthis and the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee (SRC) Mohammed Ali al-Houthi demanded the UN Secretary General to condemn the war crimes committed in Yemen. Among the crimes perpetrated by the coalition of the Arab countries (led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the countries of the West), the Houthi leader named the ruthless blockade of the Yemen people, the famine in the country, the ongoing air embargo, the blockade of the Red Sea ports, the mass murders (including those of children), the destruction of civil facilities targeted during the military attacks.

The UN strongly condemned the following Saudi air raid on the Yemen capital city of Sanaa which resulted in the death of many civilians, including five children; dozens of people were wounded. The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Henrietta Holsman Fore, speaking at the UN Security Council session, urged the international community to save the lives of the millions of Yemenite children. She emphasized that, since the beginning of the conflict in the country, according to official figures only, up to 10,000 children had been killed or wounded. According to the UN, the Saudi Air Force “aimed at the civilians systematically,” dropping bombs on hospitals, schools, weddings, funeral processions and even on the camps for the displaced persons escaping from bombing.

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2.2mn Yemeni children close to famine, 70% rise in those killed over past year – UNICEF

RT
 

Children in Yemen are teetering between life and death, as 2.2 million suffer from acute malnutrition, while those killed by hostilities jumped 70 percent last year, UNICEF warned on the second anniversary of the war in the Middle East’s poorest country. 

Two years into the Yemeni conflict, children continue to suffer the consequences and will soon succumb to starvation without prompt humanitarian assistance and viable efforts to bring peace to the war-ravaged country, UNICEF said in a report entitled ‘Falling through the Cracks.’ 

Nearly half a million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which is manifest in grotesquely slim bodies and stunted growth – a 200-percent increase since 2014, the report warned. The fighting and devastation has forced Yemenis into buying cheaper food or skipping meals, while around 80 percent of families are in debt or borrowing money just to feed their children.

READ MORE: UN: ‘People will starve to death’ as world faces largest humanitarian crisis since WWII

UNIECF, which is now spearheading relief efforts in Yemen, said nearly 2.2 million children are currently acutely malnourished and require urgent care. Children suffering from severe acute malnutrition are ten times more likely to die than their healthy peers because their weakened immune systems leave them vulnerable to diseases. Consequently, UNICEF has classified them as having a life-threatening condition.

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‘Dying in silence’: Suffering of Syrian children at its worst, millions under attack, says UNICEF

Comment: We can thank US-NATO governments for this disgusting spectacle.

 

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RT

 

There are now nearly 6 million Syrian children suffering from the perils of war, including hundreds who were killed, maimed or recruited to fight in 2016, the worst year on record for Syrian children, a UN watchdog has said. 

 

“The depth of suffering is unprecedented. Millions of children in Syria come under attack on a daily basis, their lives turned upside down,”said Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, speaking from Homs, Syria. “Each and every child is scarred for life with horrific consequences on their health, well-being and future.

At least 652 children died last year, and 255 of them were killed in or near their schools, the UNICEF report said. That signals a 20 percent increase on the number killed during 2015. 

“A father in Aleppo lives with the trauma of letting his daughters go to school,” Cappelaere said, retelling one of the many heart-breaking stories from the conflict. “They left their makeshift home one morning with their schoolbags on their backs. Only their lifeless bodies returned after a shell slammed into their classroom.”

UNICEF also believes more than 850 children were recruited to take part in hostilities – double the number in 2015 – and were used as executioners, suicide bombers or prison guards.

While horrifying, the number pales in comparison to the 5.8 million Syrian children who are  dependent on humanitarian assistance – a twelvefold increase from 2012, the organization said.

“Beyond the bombs, bullets and explosions, children are dying in silence often from diseases that can otherwise be easily prevented. Access to medical care, lifesaving supplies and other basic services remains difficult,” the report added.

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Religious eugenics: How Saudi Arabia is sponsoring a frightening new movement in the ME

Catherine Shakdam
RT

Blanketed by its wealth and protected by political alliances, Saudi Arabia has covertly run and promoted a new movement in the Middle East: religious eugenics, under the false pretense of opposing the rise of Iran. From Syria to Bahrain and Yemen the evidence is overwhelming.

Earlier this August, the Red Cross added its voice to those of other humanitarian and rights groups in its condemnation of Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, lifting the lid on Riyadh's little house of horrors in southern Arabia.

In no uncertain terms Peter Maurer, the head of the international Red Cross told reporters he had seldom witnessed such degree of devastation. He said: "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years ... The images I have from Sanaa and Aden remind of what I have seen in Syria."

He stressed "the firepower with which this war is fought on the ground and in the air is causing more suffering than in other societies, which are stronger and where infrastructures are better off and people are wealthier and have reserves and can escape."

A country in ruins, Yemen is also a nation in permanent mourning, as every day its people are relentlessly slain - casualties of a violent and murderous colonial war - the latest victims of Riyadh's expansionist military campaign in the Middle East.

According to official UNICEF tallies, "close to 2,800 people have been killed and almost 13,000 people injured (including 279 children killed and 402 injured, respectively). An estimated 1 million people have been internally displaced (an increase of 122 percent since the crisis began), and some 400,000 people have sought protection in neighboring countries."

While such figures are horrifying, they fall short of the truth. Agencies on the ground have already said that well over 500 children have been killed in Saudi-led air raids, most specifically in northern Yemen, where the war has been most devastating and aggressive. On average, children account for a quarter of all deaths and casualties. 

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469 Gaza children killed, over 370,000 need ‘psychosocial aid’ – UNICEF

RT

At least 469 children have been killed and over 3,000 injured in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive, a senior UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said, adding that more than 370,000 Palestinian kids require “immediate psychosocial first aid.”
 
Nine children have died in Gaza violence since Wednesday, the chief of UNICEF’s Gaza field office, Pernilla Ironside, said at a press conference on Thursday in New York. 

“There isn’t a single family in Gaza who hasn’t experienced personally death, injury, the loss of their home, extensive damage, displacement,” Ironside said. 

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Human rights organisation accuses Israel of war crimes

Press TV

A Palestinian human rights organization says crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinian children amount to war crimes, Press TV reports.

"Killing children in armed conflicts is a war crime and that is exactly what Israeli forces did to Palestinian children," Samir Zaqut, an official from al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, told Press TV. He further noted, "Israeli forces killed and injured thousands of Palestinian children in the past 14 years."
"There is also arbitrary arrest of the Palestinian children ...," he added.

Last year, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) voiced alarm over the Israeli regime's use of violence against Palestinian children.

In its report, the agency said some 700 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17 are arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli forces every year in the occupied West Bank.

The UNICEF report blamed Israeli authorities for practices that "amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture."

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Social Affairs Kamal al-Sharafi said Israeli forces have killed 1,520 Palestinian children and wounded 6,000 more over the past fourteen years.

He said more than 10,000 Palestinian kids have been arrested, 200 of whom are being held in Israeli detention centers.