Al Mukalla: A tear-inducing video showing a bloodstained Yemeni boy pleading with a doctor not to bury him has attracted thousands of views on social media as a local human rights NGO said at least 155 children have been killed by Al Houthis in the war in the country. He later died from his injuries.
A video posted on YouTube showing a boy from Taiz pleading with doctors not to bury him. The boy was hit by a Houthi shell while playing his friends in the city.
Fareed Shawky, 7, who hailed from the densely populated city of Taiz, appeared in the video imploring doctors not to bury him as they were treating him in a local hospital. Fareed’s appeal triggered laughter from one of the rescuers who assured him that he would be fine.
Residents told Gulf News that Fareed and his friends were playing on October 13 in a slum in the city when a mortar shell hit them.
“Four of the boys were killed and the remaining were critically injured,” Ali Al Sarari, a local human rights activist with Sana’a-based Sejay Organisation for Childhood Protection, a popular NGO, told Gulf News on Wednesday.
Fareed was the only boy who was caught on camera in a hospital before dying three days later.
Ahmad Al Basha, a local photographer who filmed the boy, told Gulf News that the terrified Fareed was bleeding from his head when he arrived in the hospital and doctors pulled out all the stops to save his life.
“Shrapnel from the shell landed in his head and caused internal bleeding.” Hours after arriving in the hospital, Fareed went into a coma and passed away three days later, according to Al Basha.
Al Basha and Al Sarari said that the shell that targeted the boys was fired from areas controlled by Al Houthi militants who impose a blockade on the city. Fareed was buried on October 17.
Al Houthis and their allies raided Yemen’s third city in March setting off bloody clashes with local tribesmen and pro-government army soldiers. The militia is in control of main entrances of the city while its opponents control more than 90 per cent of the city’s neighbourhoods.
Al Sarari said that Al Houthis’ incriminate shelling of residential areas has killed more than 155 children and injured hundreds others.
“There is no safe area in the city. The war has killed and injured more than 815 children since March.”
Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that Al Houthis and the forces of the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh have “repeatedly fired mortar shells and artillery rockets indiscriminately into populated neighbourhoods” in Taiz.
