UNICEF's figures show the number of children killed in Yemen's latest round of fighting rising from at least nine to at least 15 in nine days, and the number of people forced from their homes reaching nearly 130,000.
In a statement datelined Aden on Friday 25 September, UNICEF said it has verified that at least 15 children have been killed since 3 September and 14 injured, with three missing. On Wednesday 16 September it said at least nine children had been reported killed and 12 injured over the same period, with three missing. The earlier figure was reported, the later one verified, so the two are not on exactly the same basis.
Displacement has followed the same curve. On 16 September UNICEF reported more than 104,000 people, including over 57,000 children, displaced in two weeks, as fighting spread across western Taiz, southern Hudaydah, Marib and other areas. The statement of 25 September puts the total at nearly 130,000 people over the past three weeks, including an estimated 71,000 children, with the majority displaced in the southwestern Taiz Governorate.
UNICEF's representative in Yemen, Akhil Iyer, said: "Children across Yemen are yet again at the sharpest end of escalating conflict." Its mobile teams screened nearly 2,900 children and found more than one in four acutely malnourished, with over 200 suffering severe acute malnutrition.
Health access is narrowing at the same time. UN News reports the World Health Organization as saying UN operations have been suspended in 90 of the 105 health-cluster priority districts in northern Yemen.
The FCDO's position is unchanged: it advises against all travel to the whole of Yemen and says anyone there should leave immediately. We reported on the escalation around the Bab al-Mandab on 16 September.
What it means for teams
The figures describe a conflict that is still growing rather than settling. For anyone supporting maritime, humanitarian or logistics tasks with a Yemen dimension, treat the southwest, and Taiz in particular, as the current centre of gravity, and expect blocked roads and displaced populations in the region.
Medical support inside Yemen should be assumed to be thin. The WHO suspension figure covers northern Yemen, but any plan anywhere in the country that relies on local treatment or casualty evacuation through Yemeni facilities needs to be re-checked against current access.
UNICEF gives its casualty figures as minimums, and they rose between its updates of 16 September and 25 September.
