RIYADH: Doctors in Saudi Arabia have successfully separated conjoined twins from war-torn Yemen after a “complicated” 15-hour operation, Saudi state media reported on Monday.

The baby boys, Yussef and Yassin, were “conjoined in several organs”, and some 24 doctors were involved in the operation to separate them, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.

Yemen has been wracked by a brutal seven-year conflict pitting the Saudi-backed government against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, whose seizure of the capital Sanaa in 2014 prompted a Saudi-led military coalition to intervene.

More than 150,000 people have died in the violence and the country’s health system has been devastated, in what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Saudi Arabia’s state-run King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSRelief) regularly touts its humanitarian assistance to Yemen as evidence of Riyadh’s commitment to alleviating the suffering there.

The centre’s doctors carried out the “four-phase surgery” separating Yussef and Yassin, describing it as “among the most complicated” they had performed, the SPA said.

Last July Saudi doctors separated a Yemeni baby from her parasitic twin, saying at the time it was their 50th successful operation on conjoined twins.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2022