Local Editor

Human Rights Watch [HRW] urged the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen on Thursday to stop using cluster ammunitions, saying it had uncovered new evidence of their devastating impact.

A Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States has been carrying out a military aggression on Yemen by launching airstrikes against the country since March. The airstrikes have not been authorized by the United Nations [UN].

The New York-based watchdog, HRW, said that dozens of civilians were killed or wounded in at least seven such apparent attacks in the northwestern province of Hajja in Yemen between late April and mid-July.

"Cluster munitions are adding to the terrible civilian toll in Yemen’s conflict," said HRW researcher Ole Solvang.

"Coalition forces should immediately stop using these weapons and join the treaty banning them", he said. 

HRW said that its researchers had visited four of the alleged attack sites and found unexploded submunitions or remnants of cluster munition rockets.

"Although the evidence is not definitive, several factors indicate that the Saudi-led coalition carried out the seven attacks," it said.

It said that it had identified the weapons used in the seven attacks, which struck within 19 kilometers of the Saudi-Yemeni border, as US-made M26 cluster munition rockets.

"I saw a bomb exploding in the air and pouring out many smaller bombs," Mohammad al-Marzuqi, a resident from the village of Malus, was quoted as saying.

"Then an explosion threw me on the floor. I lost consciousness and somebody transferred me to the hospital with burns and wounds on the heels of the feet and fragmentation wounds on the left side of my body", he further said. 

HRW joined other rights groups urging the UN Human Rights Council to form an international commission of inquiry to investigate "alleged serious laws-of-war violations" by parties to the armed conflict in Yemen since September 2014.