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PRESS RELEASE


UN Blacklists Obama/U.K. ‘Saudi-led Coalition’ in Yemen for Murdering Children

June 6, 2016 (EIRNS)—The UN Secretary General’s Annual Report on "Children and Armed Conflict," released on June 2, has placed the "Saudi Arabia-led coalition" forces in Yemen on its blacklist of parties which recruit, use, kill, or maim children in situations of armed conflict on the agenda of the UN Security Council.

Not stated in the UN report is that the genocide being committed by that "Saudi Arabia-led coalition" is run from a warroom permanently staffed by U.S. and British officials providing intelligence on targeting, mid-air refueling for attack planes, and other kinds of vital support for their operations.

The UN Secretary General’s report warns that

"the situation in Yemen was particularly worrisome with a five-fold increase in the number of children recruited and six times more children killed and maimed compared to 2014.... alarming trends [which] continued into early 2016."

It then specifies that UN officials verified that 60% of the total child casualties they recorded in Yemen "were attributed to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition." That is, the killing of 510 children, and maiming of 667 others is laid on the Saudi coalition doorstep.

The number of attacks on schools and hospitals doubled in 2015 over those in 2014, with 90% of those attacks causing the partial or complete destruction of those schools or health facilities. The UN attributes 57% of all attacks on schools to Saudi coalition forces, and just under half (48%) of the attacks overall to that coalition.

Sixty percent of the child casualties were caused by air strikes, which continued to be carried out in 2016. Again, the report does not cite the U.S./U.K.-staffed warroom directing those air strikes carried out by the "Saudi Arabia-led coalition."

The genocide being carried out by Obama-U.K.-Saudi forces which started the war is vastly underestimated by the nature of this specific, technical report. On June 2, UN Coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick told a press conference in Geneva that the war has "broken almost completely" government services and the health system. He said the overall healthcare system throughout Yemen has all but collapsed, with more than 600 health facilities closing their doors due to the lack of financial resources to procure medicine, supplies and fuel for generators. "Thousands of medical staff have also gone unpaid or left the country."

The result?

"Ten thousand kids under five was mentioned as a figure of people, of children who have died from preventable diseases because of the lack of services, the lack of medicine,"

McGoldrick said.

"And, dying, you know, of things like pneumonia and diarrhea A lot of these deaths are covered up by the fact that a lot of them are related to nutrition as well."

"The scale of the emergency is tremendous," he said.

"The scale of the needs is massive and the depth of the crisis is immeasurable and the suffering that goes with that is just incredulous [sic]. Every corner you turn; everyone you meet has been affected by this crisis. Everybody who you come across in any part of this country has felt this conflict, has felt this war."

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