According to a Yemen and Kuwait researcher at the Human Rights Watch [HRW] in Yemen, Belkis Wille, she told RT: "If they [the Saudis] saw all these [wedding party] guests as collateral damage, that is a very serious and very clear violation of the laws of war".
Belkis Wille added that the laws of war include "a key principle of proportionality" that forbids striking out at areas if the number of civilian casualties there would be higher than the number of combatants hit.
While a United Nations [UN] statement said that the death toll in Monday’s air strike on a wedding in Yemen has risen to 135 people, UN human rights agency spokesman, Rupert Colville, told reporters: "This may be the single deadliest incident since the start of the conflict".
The armed conflict in Yemen has claimed the lives of 2,355 civilians in the last six months, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR]. UN data does not include 131 civilian victims of Monday’s airstrike on the wedding party, RIA Novosti reported.
Additionally, the editor-in-chief of London-based ’al-Quds al-Arabi’ daily newspaper, Abdel Bari Atwan, told RT: "In fact...they bombed the wedding party, regardless who is the groom and who is the bride. It is actually a massacre, whether we like it or not, whether with agree with this coalition or not. Six months of heavy bombardment, definitely the civilian casualties are escalating day after day. This is the silent war. I am surprised nobody is paying attention to this war where civilian are killed".
Yet, the Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing in Yemen for six months denied responsibility for the attack.
Since March 26, a Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States has been carrying out a military aggression on Yemen by launching airstrikes against the country. The airstrikes have not been authorized by the United Nations [UN].
