Local Editor
US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said his country's support for the Saudi Arabia and UAE-led coalition fighting in Yemen was not unconditional but suggested the United States would continue to support the alliance as it works to reduce fallout on civilians.
Mattis told reporters that the US has been working with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to improve airstrike targeting and recognizes that tragedies have occurred.
"We recognize every mistake like this is tragic in every way, but we have not seen any callous disregard by the people we're working with," Mattis said. "So we will continue to work with them."
He said the US is constantly reviewing its support for the coalition, adding it will continue to do all it can to limit civilian deaths.
"Our conduct there is to try to keep the human cost of innocents being killed accidentally to the absolute minimum [...] Our goal is to reduce this tragedy and to get it to the UN-brokered table as quickly as possible," Mattis said.
The military alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE has been at war with Houthi revolutionaries since March 2015. At least 10,000 people have been killed since the start of the conflict, according to the United Nations. Analysts, however, say the death toll may be much higher.
While not directly involved in any of the fighting, the US and the UK have sold more than $12bn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia alone - including some of the warplanes and the payloads they drop.
An air raid by the Saudi-UAE coalition earlier this month hit a bus in a busy market in northern Yemen, killing dozens, including children. The US is pressing the Saudi government to complete an investigation of what went wrong.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
