The proposal was given the United Nations envoy for Yemen on Thursday.
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“The firepower with which this war is fought on the ground and in the air is causing more suffering than in other societies which are stronger and where infrastructures are better off and people are wealthier and have reserves and can escape”, Mr Maurer said at the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva. Many others are believed to have been injured or killed in the past week in air strikes, shelling and fighting in densely populated areas.
Cousin said she had met mothers who were only able to give their children tea in the morning and bread and sugar in the evening.
“A selfless activity, turned in a moment into senseless bloodshed”, he said.
An average of eight children are killed or maimed every day in Yemen as a direct result of the conflict that has gripping the country since April, according to a new report released on Wednesday by the United Nations Childrenâs Fund (UNICEF). Some 80 per cent of the population of 26 million desperately need aid, and more than a million have been driven from their homes in the almost five-month war.
Some 1.8 million children are likely to suffer from some form of malnutrition by the end of the year.
Head of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) Ertharin Cousin said that Yemen markets do not have sufficient food to feed the people in the country, the BBC reported.
The attacks underscore the fragility of Yemen’s government despite hundreds of air strikes from Gulf Arab states. Sana’a is the capital and is under Ansarullah fighters and Popular Committees control.
Yemen’s fighting, which escalated in March, pits the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against southern separatists, local and tribal militias, Sunni Islamic militants and troops loyal to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, which are backed by a Saudi-led coalition.
The skyline of Yemeni capital Sanaa is filled with black smoke yesterday as the Saudi-led coalition bombs an air base.
But the crisis dates back to 2011 when street protests began against poverty, unemployment, corruption and discrimination.
The joint force will consist of about 10,000 fighters from across the Tihamah region on Yemen’s west coast, according to the spokesman, and will rely on the Saudi-led coalition for logistic support and military equipment.
The governor of Yemen’s main southern city of Aden survived an attack Thursday on his offices that killed four people and wounded 20 others, he told AFP.
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Al-Qaida militants have seized control of key areas in and around Yemen’s port city of Aden, high-ranking security officials said Saturday, a major gain for the group which has been making inroads amid the chaos of the country’s civil war.
