Houthis ‘recruiting thousands of Yemeni children’
Agencies | Al Mukalla
The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Almost 2,000 Yemeni children, some as young as 10, recruited by the Iran-backed Houthis were killed in fighting between early 2020 and May 2021, the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen said.
The Yemeni militia continues to arrange mass indoctrination and recruitment gatherings for children, the experts said. Families who refused to send their children to the rebels’ summer camps or battlefields were punished by the rebels.
In their annual report to the UN Security Council released on Saturday, the experts confirmed that the Houthis held large summer camps in schools and mosques where Yemeni children were radicalised, given weapons training and then sent to the battlefields to fight Yemeni government forces.
“The panel received a list of 1,406 children recruited by the Houthis who died on the battlefield in 2020. The panel also received a list of 562 children recruited by the Houthis who died on the battlefield between January and May 2021,” the experts said in the 303-page report. During the annual summer camps, children received military training.
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