Saudi Arabia hands child prisoners over to Yemen gov’t

By Zakaria al-Kamali

SANAA (AA) - Saudi Arabia has handed 54 child prisoners over to the Yemeni government, a Yemeni government source has said.

The move was followed by the removal of a Saudi-led coalition -- currently fighting Yemen’s Shia Houthi group -- from a blacklist of children’s rights violators.

"The Yemeni government received 54 child prisoners, including two Africans, from Saudi Arabia," the source, who spoke anonymously due to restrictions on speaking to media, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.

The released children had been employed as child fighters by the Houthis and their allies before being captured by Saudi-led coalition forces.

Neither the Yemeni government nor Saudi Arabia, however, has yet to officially confirm the handover.

On Monday, UN mediator Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said Yemen’s warring rivals had agreed to release all child prisoners at faltering peace talks currently underway in Kuwait.

"The unconditional release of children was agreed upon and the mechanics of their release in coming days was addressed," Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement.

Also on Monday, the UN announced that it had temporarily removed the Saudi-led coalition from its child rights blacklist pending a joint review by the world body.

The move came after a UN report blamed the coalition for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year.

"Pending the conclusions of the joint review, the secretary-general has removed the listing of the coalition in the report's annex," Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said in a statement.

Yemen has been racked by chaos and bloodshed since late 2014, when the Houthis and their allies overran capital Sanaa and other parts of the country, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his Saudi-backed government to temporarily flee to Riyadh.

In March of last year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen aimed at reversing Houthi gains and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.

In April of this year, the Yemeni government and the Houthis entered into UN-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait aimed at resolving the conflict, in which more than 6,400 people have been killed and another 2.5 million forced to flee their homes.