Local Editor

UN officials stated that the deadly Saudi-led coalition airstrike that hit a wedding in Yemen on Monday predominantly killed women and children.

Over 130 people reportedly died when a Saudi-led airstrike struck tents full of people in al-Wahijah, a village near the port of Mokha in the western part of Yemen. 

"We can confirm the airstrike struck a wedding party", Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the UN’s human rights office said. "In Yemen, they separate women and men at parties - the airstrike hit the women’s’ party, and that’s why the majority of victims are women and children".

However, the coalition denied that an airstrike had taken place in the vicinity of al-Wahijah.

The first accounts of the airstrike emerged as US Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders that the Saudi-led bombing aggression had killed a disproportionate number of Yemen’s civilians since it began in late March.

"...Most of the casualties are being caused by airstrikes", Ban told world leaders as he opened this year’s general debate. "I call for an end to the bombings, which are also destroying Yemeni cities, infrastructure, and heritage".

UN officials said Ban’s language, and an explicit call for an end to air operations targeting Houthi revolutionaries and their allies, expressed a growing frustration with the Saudi coalition, which operates with the blessing of Yemen’s former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Hours later, the Secretary-General’s office further condemned the Saudi-led airstrike, saying it might have killed "as many as 135 people".

The UN’s outspoken denunciation of what might be the conflict’s deadliest single attack also coincided with what appeared to be a shift in position on the part of American officials, who declared on Tuesday that they supported initiatives to establish a human rights mission to investigate crimes committed in Yemen.

The US, which provides logistical and targeting support to the Saudi-led coalition - in addition to selling billions of dollars in armaments to Gulf States - wavered for more than a week after the Netherlands introduced a resolution authorizing such a mission at the UN’s Human Rights Council in Switzerland’s Geneva.

More than 5,000 people had been killed by all sides since the start of the coalition intervention on March 26, according to the UN. Nearly half of them - 2,355 - had been civilians, and an additional 4,862 non-combatants had been wounded. The UN’s human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, called for an independent international human rights inquiry in Yemen that would investigate violations of international law committed in the country. 

On Tuesday, Zeid’s office, responding to questions raised by coalition-member Jordan, defended its human rights reporting, which has similarly indicated airstrikes are causing the majority of civilian casualties.

"Members of the High Commissioner’s team in Yemen have taken considerable trouble, at great personal risk, to verify as many incidents as they can", said spokesman Rupert Colville.

Colville, quoting a report issued by Zeid earlier this month in which he called for an inquiry, acknowledged that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was "unable to verify the vast majority of allegations of human rights violations and abuses or violations of international law".

"For this reason, among others, the High Commissioner’s report recommended that coalition forces and the Government of Yemen ensure prompt, thorough, effective, independent, and impartial investigations", Colville said.