03 July 2018•Update: 03 July 2018
By Fatih Erel
GENEVA
At least 2,200 children have been killed during three years of the Yemeni war, the UN said on Tuesday.
"The relentless conflict in Yemen has pushed a country already on the brink deep into the abyss. Social services are barely functional. The economy is in ruins. Prices have soared. Hospitals have been damaged. Schools have turned into shelters or have been taken over by armed groups," UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a news conference in Geneva following her 4-day visit to Yemen.
Some 11 million children in Yemen need help getting food, treatment, education, water and sanitation, Fore said.
"Since 2015, more than half of health facilities have stopped working, and 1,500 schools have been damaged due to airstrikes and shelling," she said.
Noting that at least 2,200 children have been killed and 3,400 injured during the last three years, she warned that these are verified numbers and actual figures could be even higher.
"In Sanaa, at a ward for malnourished children, I saw an eight-month-old child with the weight of a newborn baby. At a neonatal intensive care unit, I saw tiny babies in incubators struggling to breathe," she said.
Indicating that 5,000 families have fled their homes in the past two weeks in Hudaydah, she said: "The price of wheat and vegetable oil increased by 30 percent and that of cooking gas by 50 percent in the last week. Electricity is unavailable in most areas of the city and damage to the water supply pipes has caused severe water shortages."
