Saudi Arabia Recruits Child Soldiers to Fight in Yemen: Report
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Saudi Arabia recruited child soldiers from the Darfur region of Sudan to fight in its war against Yemen, a report said.
Almost all of the Sudanese mercenaries recruited by the oil-rich kingdom appear to have come from the impoverished and battle-scarred region of Darfur, the New York Times reported on Friday.
It added that Saudi Arabia used its oil wealth to outsource the war, mainly by hiring tens of thousands of “desperate survivors of the conflict in Darfur to fight, many of them children.”
The majority of the fighters are said to belong to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who were blamed for the systematic rape of women and girls, indiscriminate killing and other war crimes during Darfur’s conflict.
Sudanese militias are commanded by Saudi and Emirati military officials “via remote control,” as they want to keep a safe distance from the front, the bombshell report said.
One unnamed soldier who fought near Hudaydah said Saudis and Emiratis “treat the Sudanese like their firewood.”
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for more than three-and-a-half years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
The UN has recently brokered a ceasefire in Yemen but the Saudi-led coalition has continuously violated the ongoing truce.