Iran's Envoy Blasts Media's Silence over S. Arabia's Use of Darfur Kid Soldiers in Yemen War

Baeedinejad's remarks came after the New York Times wrote on Friday that child soldiers from Sudan's Darfur have reportedly been fighting on behalf of Saudi Arabia and its allies in the frontline of the deadly war on Yemen, with money being their only motive.

"The New York Times report has created a great outrage among researchers and media at the US and Europe’s silence over the Saudi coalition measure to employ insurgent Darfur mercenaries who have [previously] violated human rights, and especially over the deployment of children in the Yemeni war," Baeedinejad wrote on his Twitter account on Sunday.

He underlined that the silence of foreign-based Persian-language media over the issue is strange since they claim to be concerned about the regional impacts of the war.

The New York Times reported that the Saudis have used their vast oil wealth to outsource the war, mainly by hiring survivors of the Darfur conflict to operate in Yemen, many of them children.

Citing several Sudanese mercenaries and lawmakers, the report said that as many as 14,000 Sudanese militants have been fighting in Yemen alongside Saudi-backed forces while at least hundreds of them have been killed so far.

Almost all the Sudanese come from Darfur and most of them belong to the Rapid Support Forces, a tribal militia blamed for war crimes during the Darfur conflict, the report added.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed more than 20,000 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children. Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fueled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods. The blockade on Yemen has smothered humanitarian deliveries of food and medicine to the import-dependent state.

The UN has repeatedly criticized the Saudi-UAE-led military coalition's bombing campaign and placed it on a blacklist of child rights violators last year.

A UN panel has also compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.

A number of Western countries, the US, the UK, and France in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.

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