Saleh was forced to step down in 2012 amid the Arab Spring protests after spending more than three decades in power.
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The latest report, which was released in late May, sharply criticized the Saudi-led military campaign against Houthi separatists, claiming the coalition was responsible for about 60 percent of 1,953 child deaths and injuries in Yemen during the previous year.
The reassignment of personnel, around June, came because “there was not the same sort of requests coming in for assistance” from the Saudis, Fifth Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey said.
Ambassadors from 18 nations have accused the former Yemeni president and his rebel allies of blocking a peaceful resolution to the conflict after they formed a governing council in Sanaa.
A US Defence Department spokesman on Saturday said that Washington’s support to the coalition was not a “blank check”.
“At no point did United States military personnel provide direct or implicit approval of target selection”.
The JCPC had also largely wrapped up an earlier effort to advise the Saudi-led coalition on steps to prevent civilian casualties, the Pentagon said.
“Even as we assist the Saudis regarding their territorial integrity, it does not mean that we will refrain from expressing our concern about the war in Yemen and how it has been waged”, Stump said.
Human Rights Watch said Friday that US Secretary of State John Kerry should raise concerns with Saudi Arabia about “repeated violations of the laws of war by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that have killed many civilians”.
Notably, UN had earlier held unsuccessful peace talks in the country, intensifying fighting among the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels.
The coalition of Arab states, which is backed by the USA, intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to help battle Shiite Muslim rebels who had forced the president into exile.
Saudi Arabia’s civil defense directorate said that the Houthis had launched a missile over the border into the Najran region, killing a Saudi and wounding five Yemenis and a Pakistani who were residents there.
In Wednesday statement from Ban’s office, the United Nations chief appeared to fault both the coalition’s use of airstrikes and the Houthis prosecution of the conflict across Yemen’s border into Saudi Arabia.
The June staff withdrawal, which US officials say followed a lull in air strikes in Yemen earlier this year, reduces Washington’s day-to-day involvement in advising a campaign that has come under increasing scrutiny for causing civilian casualties.
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“The decision to evacuate the staff from a project is never taken lightly but in the absence of credible assurances that parties will respect the protected status of medical facilities there may be no other option”, they added.
