The Iran-backed Houthi militia are responsible for the death of more than 18 children who were injected with expired chemotherapy in Yemen’s Sanaa, the country’s Minister of Information Moammar Al-Eryani said on Friday. 

The children – who were receiving treatment for leukemia at a hospital in the city under the militia’s siege – were injected with doses that were stored in the Houthis warehouses months after they were contaminated, according to the minister. 

In a statement to the Yemeni News Agency (SABA), Al-Eryani confirmed that the Houthis had distributed the chemotherapy injections that had been donated to Yemen by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations to hospitals. 

The Houthis then sold some of the doses to people who desperately needed it and stored other doses for long periods of time before delivering them to the hospitals, SABA quoted the minister as saying. 

On his official Twitter account, Al-Eryani said: “We warn against [the] Houthi militia’s impeding access to medicines freely provided by [international organizations] to treat incurable diseases, including cancer, and sell them on [the] black market to make huge profits, and allow for smuggled drugs companies owned by Houthi, which exacerbated patient suffering.”