Local Editor

The Human Rights Watch [HRW] organization said that evidence shows the Saudi-led coalition is using internationally banned cluster bombs against Yemen, warning that such attacks are "harming civilians", as it said in a report released on Sunday.

In a report released on Sunday after a visit by HRW officials to Yemen’s northern province of Sa’ada, the HRW said that the cluster bombs have targeted civilians and residential areas. 

The report also said that three types of cluster bombs have been used in the attacks.

The organization also posted photos showing remnants of cluster munitions and unexploded submunitions found in several areas, including al-Nushoor and al-Maqash in Sa’ada.

"These weapons can’t distinguish military targets from civilians, and their unexploded submunitions threaten civilians, especially children, even long after the fighting," said Ole Solvang, a senior researcher at the emergency division of the HRW.

"The Saudi-led coalition and other warring parties in Yemen need to recognize that using banned cluster munitions is very likely to harm civilians", she further said. 

The HRW report also urged the supporters of the Saudi aggression against Yemen, particularly the United States, to condemn the use of the banned weapons by Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, the HRW said that the banned ammunitions had already wounded civilians, including a child in attacks on northern city of Saada, pointing out that a HRW team had visited Saada province recently this month [May].

It said that two of three people wounded in one attack from the air were likely to have been civilians, while the source of ground-fired cluster bombs that wounded four other civilians, including a child, was not determined. Both cases took place in an area under attack by the coalition, it added.

One Yemeni man from the area of Marran in Sa’ada told the HRW that he was injured in a cluster bomb attack, explaining that the weapon "first explodes in the air, and then explodes many times on the ground."

  The HRW researcher, Solvang, also expressed concern that, "Increasing evidence of cluster munition use raises concerns not just for civilians now, but for when the fighting is over".

The HRW said recently on May 3 that photographs, video footage, and other evidence have surfaced since mid-April 2015, indicating that cluster munitions have been used in attacks on Sa’ada.

Yemen has been the target of incessant US-led Saudi airstrikes since March 26. 

The UN says that close to 2,000 people have been killed approximately 500,000 others have been injured since March 19 due to the ongoing conflict in Yemen.