Researchers: Yemen Death Toll Is At Least Six Times Higher Than Estimate

10,000 killed estimate is long outdated

Jason Ditz 

Posted onDecember 12, 2018CategoriesNewsTagsYemen

For years, the official UN estimate of 10,000 killed in Yemen has been repeated as the war’s official toll estimate. This has remained true despite huge, very public death tolls otherwise. The UK-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) is the latest to try to provide a more up-to-date figure.

Their number, based on open-source data, is 60,223 killed in violence, including a staggering 28,182 killed so far in 2018. The toll has been rising calamitously in recent months, but without official acknowledgement, it’s largely gone unacknowledged.

This is, incidentally, only those killed violently, and doesn’t include the even larger number of deaths from the Saudi naval blockade and the mass starvation that has followed. Though good data is even harder to come by on that, Save the Children has estimated 85,000 starvation deaths since 2016.

It is not, then, an overstatement when people say that the Yemen War is one of the worst humanitarian crises on Earth today. It is clear how bad the situation is, even if the formal death tolls are carefully kept uncounted, and the 10,000 figure is clearly misleading.

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/12/12/researchers-yemen-death-toll-is-at-least-six-times-higher-than-estimate/