Local Editor
According to the rights group, the attacks underscore the urgent need for foreign governments to suspend all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and for the United Nations [UN] human rights office to send additional investigators to Yemen to carry out credible investigations of abuses by the coalition.
"Saudi-led forces are bombing civilians in Yemen with newly supplied US weapons," said Priyanka Motaparthy, senior emergencies researcher at HRW. "The Obama administration is running out of time to completely suspend US arms sales to Saudi Arabia or be forever linked to Yemen wartime atrocities."
Since the beginning of the Saudi-led campaign in March 2015, HRW found remnants of US-supplied weapons at the site of 23 apparently unlawful coalition airstrikes, including more than a dozen attacks involving US-made cluster munitions.
The US approved more than US$20 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia in 2015 alone. Three US arms sales in 2015 and 2016, worth nearly US$3 billion, involved replenishing Saudi weaponry used in Yemen.
The rights group had located remnants of US-made weapons at the site of coalition airstrikes in Arhab in Sanaa governorate and in the Hodeida governorate. A September 10 attack on a drilling site for water in Arhab martyred at least 31 civilians, including three children.
Both the UN and HRW had reported numerous unlawful attacks by coalition forces by October 2015.
A coalition airstrike on October 29 struck the al-Zaydiya security administration building north of the city of Hodeida. Many of the about 100 people who were being detained in the facility died in the bombing.
Another coalition airstrike on Souq al-Hinood, a densely populated neighborhood in Hodeida, on September 21 martyred at least 28 civilians, including eight children, and wounded 32 others. The only known military target in the vicinity was the city’s Presidential Palace, about 450 to 500 meters away, which was bombed earlier that day.
Based on the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR], between March 2015 and October 2016, at least 4,125 civilians were martyred and 7,207 wounded in Yemen, the majority by coalition airstrikes.
OHCHR reported in August that airstrikes had been the "single largest cause of casualties" over the past year.
The continued transfer of arms by the US to Saudi Arabia, despite evidence of their repeated use in unlawful attacks, may make the US complicit in some of the coalition’s violations in Yemen.
The US is also party to the conflict in Yemen, providing targeting intelligence and refueling planes during bombing raids, but the US has not announced any independent investigation into its actions in the Yemen war.
According to a Reuters investigation, US officials debated internally whether US support to the coalition could make US personnel criminally liable for war crimes in Yemen.
Though, immediately following the October 8 funeral hall attack, the US National Security Council announced the US had "initiated an immediate review of our already significantly reduced support" to the coalition and was "prepared to adjust our support."
However, the US made no further announcements regarding how it planned to alter support for the war in Yemen nor released any findings from the review.
Accordingly, HRW urged US president Barack Obama to halt all arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and make the cluster munition ban permanent and extend it to all other countries, in addition to ensuring that the review examines whether US forces participated in any unlawful coalition attacks in Yemen, and release the review findings before leaving office.
Regarding the United Kingdom, HRW said that it also sells arms to Saudi Arabia, despite growing parliamentary pressure over its support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen and evidence of the use of British-made weapons in Yemen.
HRW had documented the use of UK-made weapons in three apparently unlawful coalition attacks in Yemen. Since March 2015, the UK had approved £3.3 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia, according to the London-based Campaign against Arms Trade.
"Governments selling weapons to Saudi Arabia cannot with any credibility rely on either coalition or Yemeni-led investigations to determine whether these weapons are being used against civilians," Motaparthy said. "The US, UK, and others selling weapons to Saudi Arabia should suspend these sales until unlawful attacks are curtailed and properly investigated."
Source: HRW, Edited by Website Team
