Alwaght- The Saudi-led warplanes using United States-supplied bombs killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, in northwestern Yemen on March 15, 2016, Human Rights Watch said today.
The two strikes, on a crowded market in the village of Mastaba caused indiscriminate or foreseeably disproportionate loss of civilian life, in violation of the laws of war. Such unlawful attacks when carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.
Human Rights Watch conducted on-site investigations on March 28, and found remnants at the market of a GBU-31 satellite-guided bomb, which consists of a US-supplied MK-84 2,000-pound bomb mated with a JDAM satellite guidance kit, also US-supplied. A team of journalists from ITV, a British news channel, visited the site on March 26, and found remnants of an MK-84 bomb paired with a Paveway laser guidance kit. Human Rights Watch reviewed the journalists’ photographs and footage of these fragments.
“One of the deadliest strikes against civilians in Yemen’s year-long war involved US-supplied weapons, illustrating tragically why countries should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The US and other coalition allies should send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that they want no part in unlawful killings of civilians.”
The New York-based rights group has called on the US, Britain , France, and other countries to suspend all weapon sales to the Saudi regime until it curtails its unlawful airstrikes in Yemen, credibly investigates alleged violations, and holds those responsible to account. Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia may make these countries complicit in violations, HRW said.
So far, HRW says it has documented 36 illegal airstrikes conducted by the Saudi-led forces in Yemen, some of which may amount to war crimes.
The Saudi regime and its allies started the aggression against Yemen on March 26 2015 with the stated objective of destroying the popular Ansarullah movement and restoring to power fugitive former Yemeni president Abdu Rabuh Mansour Hadi. The brutal Saudi war has left over 9,400 people dead, most of them civilians including thousands of women and children.
The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, markets, schools, factories and mosques.
