Saudi Airstrikes in Yemen Responsible for Most of the Civilian Casualties

Local Editor

The Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen are responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said today.

The announcement didn’t come as a surprise as it has been reported repeatedly that the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia, had targeted many times populated territories in Yemen during its campaign against the Yemeni revolutionaries, known as the Houthis Ansarullah movement.

The coalition supports the exiled Yemeni government led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and tries to bring it back in power after being forced to withdraw from Yemen.

Since the start of the airstrike campaign in March 2015, the citizens of the poorest state in the Middle East are witnessing a humanitarian destruction. At least 7.6 million people are now seriously "food insecure" in Yemen.Moreover, on 5 January, the UN reported that civilian casualties in Yemen topped 8,100, with nearly 2,800 of them killed, amid Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, shelling by Houthi groups and other clashes.

On 4 March, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, also told journalists in Geneva, Switzerland that civilian casualties continued to mount in Yemen, during February. Last month, a total of at least 168 civilians were killed and 193 injured and around two-thirds of them were hit by the Arab-coalition airstrikes. In the country as a whole, 117 civilians were killed and another 129 wounded as a result of airstrikes in February, with the largest number of casualties (99) attributed to airstrikes hitting the capital, Sana’a.

Today, it was reported that another airstrike on 16 March, on a market in northern Yemen’s Hajja province, caused the death of 119 people, including 22 children. According to reports, after the carnage caused by the airstrike, a panel of UN experts has said the coalition has carried out 119 sorties and called for the urgent need for establishing an international probe for war crimes in Yemen.

After the market massacre, the Arab-coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, told AFP in an exclusive interview that the coalition is "in the end of the major combat phase," in Yemen. His statement was welcomed by the White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

However, a similar announcement was made in April 2015. Then, al-Asiri, had said that the objectives of the campaign have been met and the Houthi revolutionaries, are no longer a danger.

Two days ago, the Dutch MPs asked from the national government to enforce an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, to pressure the oil-rich country to shop shelling in Yemen. A similar call was made by the MEPs to the EU main policy-makers.

This is not the first time The Netherlands are trying to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. In 2015, Dutch diplomats in the UN, asked for an independent war crimes inquiry in Yemen. However, the inquiry was blocked by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries such as Bahrain and Qatar which claimed that a war crimes investigation must be launched by the Yemeni government.

Yemen has been under military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March last year. The Saudi military strikes were launched in a failed effort to undermine the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and bring the former fugitive president back to power.

More than 8,300 people, among them 2,236 children, have been killed and 16,015 others injured since the start of the aggression. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team