US welcomes return of Yemeni prime minister to Aden

RIYADH: The US on Wednesday welcomed the return of Yemen’s Prime Minister Maeen Abdul Malik Saeed to Aden and said it was continuing to monitor the situation in the country.
US envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking called on the Yemeni government to uphold its responsibility to promote peace and stability.
“Now is the time to work together to improve the lives of Yemenis,” the State Department said in a tweet.
The prime minister returned to the port city of Aden — the interim capital — on Tuesday for the first time since March, when he left after separatist protesters stormed the presidential palace.
The US embassy in Saudi Arabia also issued a similar statement, and urged all parties to work together to address the public’s needs, improve basic services and promote economic recovery.
“We stand with the Yemeni people and support the government’s efforts to realize the hopes and aspirations of all Yemenis for a better future,” said Cathy Westley, the US charge d’affairs in Riyadh.

Meanwhile, Yemeni officials said on Wednesday that most of those killed during a recent escalation of Houthi violence were children recruited by the militia.
“Reports confirm that the majority of elements pushed by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in its recent military escalation in Shabwa and the southern districts of Marib, who were killed or captured by the National Army and Popular Resistance, are children who were lured through so-called summer centers,” said Minister of Information Moammar Al-Eryani.
The Houthis have been targeting children and “mercilessly throwing them” onto the front lines of the fighting, he added, describing their actions as the “largest recruitment of children in hostilities in human history.”
Al-Eryani said the silence of the international community about the crimes of the militia encourages it to continue with such activities. He also warned of a new wave of displacements affecting thousands of families, and further displacements of families already living in camps in western districts of Shabwa and southern Marib governorates, as a result of the military escalation by the Houthis and their “indiscriminate bombing of cities, villages and citizens’ homes with various types of weapons, including ballistic missiles and drones.”

Dozens of families were forced to flee from those districts, Al-Eryani said, to the overcrowded city of Marib which currently hosts more than 2.2 million internally displaced persons. This represents 60 percent of the displaced population and 7.5 percent of the total population of the country.
Marib, one of the last remaining government strongholds, had been a haven for internally displaced persons but the Houthis mounted an offensive on the gas-rich region in February in an effort to take control of it.
Al-Eryani urged the international community and the UN and US envoys, along with child-protection organizations, to condemn the actions of the Houthis and put pressure on them to halt their child-recruitment crimes, and for action to be taken through the International Criminal Court to hold the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity accountable for their actions.
He also called for the Houthis to be held accountable for their military escalation in Marib and the killing and displacement of Yemenis.