The leader of Yemen's government announced a general mobilisation in the fight against Houthi rebels on Friday, urging Yemenis to join the armed forces and “contribute in every way possible” to the struggle for power.
Rashad Al Alimi, the head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, made the announcement as the country ails in open warfare for the first time in years, with the Houthis marching to the sea and launching attacks on Saudi Arabia.
He said Houthi fighters who lay down their arms would be offered an amnesty. His address on Friday came amid dire hunger warnings and a UN forecast that millions of children would face malnutrition in the turmoil of the civil war.
“I call upon the sons of our great people to engage in general mobilisation and national duty, to rally around their armed and security forces, to join their ranks through official channels, and to contribute in every way possible,” Mr Al Alimi said.
“The objective is clear to everyone: to restore state institutions and extend their sovereignty over all of the national territory, reaching as far as Sanaa.”
The conflict between Yemeni government forces and the Iran-backed Houthis returned to full-scale fighting several weeks ago, having been largely frozen since a truce was agreed in 2022.
Violence has flared along old front lines, including around the south-western city of Taiz, as the Houthis swept south along the Red Sea coast. The fighting has led to a humanitarian crisis with more than 133,000 people displaced and some fleeing across the Red Sea to Africa.
Hunger warning
Some 2.2 million children under five are forecast to be suffering from acute malnutrition by the end of the year, Unicef said. This includes more than 500,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form.
“We're very concerned about a very visible increase in acute malnutrition among children,” Akhil Iyer, a Unicef representative in Yemen, told reporters from Aden on Friday.
“In the past weeks, of nearly 2,900 children screened by Unicef mobile nutrition teams, more than one in four children were acutely malnourished and more than 200 had severe acute malnutrition.”
Mr Iyer said access to health care and nutrition was being disrupted as families fled violence and searched for food. He cited the case of a four-year-old boy suffering from severe acute malnutrition whose family had recently fled fighting in Mokha on the coast.
The agency said at least 15 children had been killed and 14 injured since September 3, while three others were missing. Fighting has also forced 243 schools to close or suspend classes, affecting more than 137,000 students.
Unicef said it was scaling up emergency assistance to reach up to 231,000 people through mobile health and nutrition teams, water services and child protection programmes, while urging all parties to protect civilians and allow safe humanitarian access.
