Yemen has urged countries to pressure Houthi militants to stop recruiting children as soldiers in areas they control, the state news agency Saba New has reported.

Yemen’s Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani led the call on Friday, during the World Day Against Child Labor.

“In this World Day Against Child Labor, we remember tens of thousands of Yemeni children that the militia has recruited, brainwashed their minds with sectarian terrorist ideology, subjected them to military training and deployed them to the warfronts as a service to the Iranian regime,” he said.

Al-Eryani noted the Houthis have replaced mainstream education with “radicalization courses” imposed on “hundreds of thousands of children” to push them into battlefields.