UN Report: 502 Yemeni children killed by Saudi Arabia last year

Sanaa’: A draft version of a new UN Security Council report on the Saudi War in Yemen obtained by Foreign Policy, accuses the Saudi coalition for ‘grave violations’ of human rights, particularly against children in Yemen.

The report covered the past year, counted at least 502 children killed by Saudi Arabia, including 349 killed in airstrikes. It also noted that the Saudi coalition had bombed at least 28 schools over the time. It encourages the inclusion of the coalition on the blacklist of nations that kill children in war.

The Saudi coalition was included on that blacklist in 2016, following which Saudi Arabia demanded changes, on the grounds that the UN had endorsed their 2015 invasion, the UN then quietly removed them from the blacklist.

The reports suggest the US is keen to keep the UN report from being officially released, and is demanding that the UN remove the coalition as a whole, and instead only mention specific nations involved in specific strikes. Since the coalition never provides information about whose country’s planes are conducting attacks, this effectively would preclude mentioning any of the airstrikes at all.