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At least 279 children killed in last 10 weeks in Yemen

Xinhua, June 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

At least 279 children have been killed and 402 wounded since the escalation of violence in Yemen, which began on March 26, said a UN spokesman Tuesday at a daily news briefing.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) says that the number of children in Yemen who have been killed as a result of conflict over the last 10 weeks is four times that of all those confirmed to have been killed last year, when 74 were killed and 244 wounded, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary-general.

UN's Special Envoy on Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, has been meeting with the delegations from Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, and Sana'a, capital of Yemen. In the coming days, the special envoy will brief members of the international community on the situation in Yemen, said Haq.

Yemen has mired in political gridlock since 2011 when mass protests forced former President Ali Abdullash Saleh to step down. The three-year reconciliation talks failed to resolve the crisis but create huge power vacuum.

The main fight right now is between forces loyal to the beleaguered President, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, and those allied to Houthis rebels, who forced Hadi to flee Sana'a in February. Both President Hadi and the Houthis are opposed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The picture is further complicated when a coalition led by Saudi Arabia responded to a request by Hadi to intervene and launched air strikes on Houthi targets. So far, the Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen for more than two and half months. Endite