Two destructive wars have been raging in Yemen since March 26: an internal one led by the Houthis, with the backing of army troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, against an armed popular resistance movement that backs the legitimacy of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and an external war against the Houthis waged by a coalition of 10 Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia. As those wars endure, so does the suffering of Yemenis, who have paid a horrific material and humanitarian cost with the aggressors relentlessly violating their security, safety and freedom.

The war, the escalation of violence between the factions — the Houthi-Saleh alliance on the one hand, and the popular resistance on the other — and coalition airstrikes have caused the deaths of thousands of Yemenis, now easy targets for Houthi militias and Saleh loyalists who targeted residential neighborhoods and hospitals in cities that oppose them, such as Aden, Taiz, al-Dalea and Lahij. This is not to mention the victims of Houthi anti-aircraft salvos that cause indiscriminate loss of life as they fall on residential areas, exacerbated by repeated targeting errors on the part of the Saudi air force, leading to the bombing of houses, refugees camps and villages.

The damage caused by air raids against military installations and arms depots located close to residential neighborhoods, as well as the concentrated targeting by coalition planes of the Houthi stronghold of Saada, and the use of cluster munitions, as documented by Human Rights Watch, has also exponentially increased the numbers of dead and wounded. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs put the number of dead at 2,288, half of whom are civilians. The number of wounded, as of May, topped 9,755. In addition, a May 24 UNICEF press release indicated that 135 children were killed and 260 others wounded since the outbreak of the conflict.

In this regard, statistics vary as to the number of victims, due to the reliance of international monitoring organizations on Yemeni sources, which lack fact-finding accuracy, while the Houthis maintain secrecy as to the loss of human lives. A report by the Abaad Research and Study Center, published on May 19, affirmed that more than 6,000 people, mostly civilians, have died since the Houthis began their invasion of the southern regions in early March.