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Foreign ministry surprised by UNICEF representative's tweets on al-Durayhimi incident

[25/08/2018 06:05]

ADEN-SABA
Yemen's foreign ministry confirmed on Saturday that the previous Thursday's attack that killed and injured several civilians in al-Durayhimi district of Hodeidah was the result of a rocket fired by the Houthi militia.

In a statement, the ministry said it was surprised by the tweets of the UNICEF representative Meritxell Relaño's on Thursday, 23 August, that "four women and all their 22 children and four other children" were killed. The ministry was surprised as well by the statements of the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock and of the UNICEF executive manager which attributed the incident to the Arab Coalition which is backing the Yemeni government against the Houthi rebels.
"Citing information and figures from Houthi-controlled sources, namely the Houthis' self-proclaimed 'Health Ministry', and basing accusations on them is against the principle of impartiality which the UN and its organs follow," read the statement.

"The UNIECF representative drew those information from sources in the Houthi militia, particularly the Health Ministry which is run by the so-called Health Minister, the Houthi leader Taha al-Mutawakkil," it said. "The incident was the result of a rocket attack by the Houthi militia against al-Durayhimi and investigations are still going on to identify the number of victims."

The statement said the UN organizations had previously issued several statements regarding previous incidents drawing information from the Houthi self-proclaimed "Health Ministry" and Houthi-controlled hospitals and organizations "while ignoring contacting the government and the Arab Coalition to verify those information."

The ministry stressed the imperative of the UN organizations' verification of information before publishing them as learnt from the Houthi sources. It stressed the imperative of contacting the government, the Arab Coalition and independent sources so that the UN organization's published news don't end up like a retouched version of the one published by al-Masirah TV and the sisterly media of the Houthis.