Saudi-led air strikes against rebels in Yemen have left a “bloody train of civilian death”, according to a report from Amnesty worldwide.
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Saudi Arabia launched its aggression against Yemen on March 26 – without a UN mandate – in an effort to undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the country’s fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
On Tuesday Amnesty worldwide released their own report calling for a UN-commissioned investigation into the war crimes committed by all parties in the conflict in Yemen, blaming the warring sides for “blatantly” failing to take “necessary precautions to minimize civilian casualties.”
Amnesty said 141 civilians were killed and 101 wounded in June and July of this year in eight airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition.
Dozens of airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition opposing the rebels hit the mountainous area, but had yet to open up the rebels’ positions.
Over the past six months, the children’s agency has provided psychological support to help more than 150,000 children cope with the horrors of the conflict and 280,000 people have learnt how to avoid injury from unexploded ordnances and mines.
The conflicts in Yemen still continue and show no sign of resolution.
The battle for Taez is expected to be hard for the loyalists, analysts say, with recent victories by pro-government forces in Yemen’s south likely the result of rebels pulling their forces back to the city.
Tuesday’s airstrikes on the Red Sea port of Hodeida, about 90 miles southwest of Sana, destroyed or damaged storage hangars, cargo containers, loading cranes, docking facilities and at least one vessel, officials and witnesses said. It has spread disease and hunger throughout the country creating a humanitarian disaster. With commercial imports accounting for 90 percent of Yemen’s food and fuel supplies, the coalition-imposed blockade may amount to starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, a war crime.
The Houthis seized Sanaa last September in what they called a revolution against a corrupt government.
Responding to the Amnesty report, Ahmed Alibrahim, a Saudi political and security analyst, said that Saudi Arabia “is not in the business of killing innocent people”.
The United Arab Emirates condemned the “occupation” of its embassy in Sanaa by Yemen’s Houthi militias, the foreign ministry has said in a statement demanding the group’s immediate exit from the compound.
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The personnel handed military equipment to the government forces, that have been clashing with the Houthis for months, they added.
