Child Casualties from Houthi Landmines Increase Eight-Fold in Yemen

Houthi landmines that have been removed by Saudi Arabia's Masam project in Yemen. (Masam)
Houthi landmines that have been removed by Saudi Arabia's Masam project in Yemen. (Masam)
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Child Casualties from Houthi Landmines Increase Eight-Fold in Yemen

Houthi landmines that have been removed by Saudi Arabia's Masam project in Yemen. (Masam)
Houthi landmines that have been removed by Saudi Arabia's Masam project in Yemen. (Masam)

Children remain the greatest casualties of mines planted arbitrarily by the Iran-backed Houthi militias in residential areas in Yemen.

A child is wounded or killed by a landmine once every two days, found a recent study by Save the Children. The number of victims has risen eight-fold from 2018 to 2022.

Despite a year of calm in Yemen, the research said child casualties from Houthi landmines increased during the April to October 2022 truce in the country.

“One child has been killed or injured on average every three days for the past five years by landmines and other explosive devices,” it said, adding that during last year’s truce, one child was killed or injured on average every two days by landmines or other explosive devices, the highest rate in five years.

Titled “Watching Our Every Step,” the study analyzed data from January 2018 to November 2022 and found that children in Yemen are facing the highest risk in five years of encountering landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), such as artillery shells, grenades, mortars, rockets and bombs.

Save the Children said child casualties from landmines or unexploded ordnance rose to 199 in 2022 – or 55% of overall children casualties – compared to 68 in 2018 which was 7% of overall child casualties, rising as families returned home during a six-month UN-brokered truce to contaminated land.

In its study, the non-government operated organization found that children in Yemen are at risk of encountering landmines and explosive remnants of war while engaging in everyday activities such as playing, collecting firewood and water, and tending to livestock and they may lack the experience to identify or avoid them.

It said almost half of all landmine and explosive remnants of war incidents involving children were deadly.

The report also found the proportion of child injuries and deaths caused by these explosive devices increased during the six-month UN-brokered truce last year as people returned home to areas that had been battlefields.

Save the Children Deputy Country Director for Yemen Ashfaq Ahmad said: “As the country enters its ninth year of conflict, this report is a stark reminder of the devastating impact the war is having on children, Yemen's most vulnerable population.”

He added that the fact that more and more children are being killed and injured by landmines and other explosive remnants of war.

“We cannot continue to stand by and watch as children's lives are torn apart by these horrific weapons,” Ahmad stressed. “The situation in Yemen is truly horrific. All parties to the conflict must prioritize the protection of children and ensure that they are no longer exposed to the risks posed by landmines and other explosive devices.”

The study also found that with the health system on the verge of collapse and few qualified rehabilitation specialists in Yemen, children injured by explosives do not have access to the long-term care needed to recover their mobility, return to school, and reintegrate into community life.

It warned that children living in displacement camps are more at risk of getting hurt by explosive devices due to a lack of mine risk education and being in areas at high risk of floods.

Most common child injuries treated by Save the Children included amputation of upper or lower limbs and hands, as well as loss of sight and hearing. In some cases, incidents led to permanent disability due to shrapnel and injuries to the spine.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.