For 12-year-old Yemeni child Raed Gerbhi, the terrible explosion on a cold December day last year left an indelible mark in his life. It started as a normal day when he went out to herd sheep with his friends but ended with a mutilation.

Without a warning, a landmine exploded under Gerbhi's feet, cutting off his right leg and wounding his hands. His three friends were knocked meters away by the shock wave but miraculously escaped from the explosion unscathed.

According to residents of the village of Bani Faid, district of Midi, in Yemen's northern province of Hajjah, the government army sent a military unit to cordon off the area and a demining team, along with an ambulance which took Raed and his parents to a nearby hospital and then the Saudi Arabian Red Sea city of Jazan for treatment.

Two months later, Raed returned home with his parents after recovering from the injuries. The boy, who loves playing football, lost his right leg and now lives in a wheelchair.

"My friends were standing a couple of meters away, and they survived the explosion. I remembered them calling my name: Raed, Raed ... Then I saw blood running from my body and I lost consciousness," Raed said in his wheelchair, wearing a football jersey of his favorite club Juventus.

Raed has always managed to greet his friends with a smile, but he said he felt sad and lonely because he can no longer play with them.

Raed is just one of the many Yemeni children maimed or killed by landmines in Hajjah Province, once a fierce battleground for the Yemeni government forces and the Houthi rebels.

In a more tragic accident, Abdullah, another child in the nearby village, was killed by a landmine last month while grazing sheep.

"I found my son after three days of searching in the desert. I found him dead on the ground and some parts of his body were scattered," Shuei Bilal, a local villager said.

Yemen's civil war began in late 2014 when the Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

The Yemeni army, backed by the Saudi-led Arab coalition forces, recaptured Midi District from the Houthi militia in April 2018. 

Demining teams spent months clearing large swaths of the area before allowing the residents to return from the internally displaced camps.

According to local authorities, despite those efforts, mines hidden under the sand dunes have since killed 20 people in Midi, most of them children.

Military experts say most of the landmines are made of tough plastic not affected by rain, hot or cold weather, so they can stay effective for years.

"In 2021, we cleared 5,000 mines of various shapes from near farms and pastures in the northwestern parts of Hajjah," Sayyaf al-Wazei of the Demining Department in the Engineering Division said.

The United Nations Children's Fund has warned of a growing number of child victims from landmines, cluster bombs, missiles, and remnants of war in Yemen.

"As of 31 August (2021), close to 10,000 children in Yemen have been killed or injured because of the conflict, according to the numbers the United Nations has been able to verify," the UNICEF said on its website. ■