US party to appalling Saudi war crimes in Yemen: HRW
The United States has been party to numerous war crimes by the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen and is violating international requirements under the laws of war to investigate attacks on residential areas, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report.
The report, released Monday just hours after peace talks concluded with no clear resolution to the deadly conflict, finds that the Saudi-led campaign “carried out at least six apparently unlawful airstrikes in residential areas of the capital, Sana’a, in September and October 2015, killing 60 civilians.”
Human Rights Watch found no evidence that airstrikes on various neighborhoods of the Yemeni capital had a military target.
The rights group visited the sites in late October and interviewed survivors. “These attacks failed to distinguish civilians from military objectives or caused disproportionate civilian loss,” it said.
“How many civilians will die in unlawful airstrikes in Yemen before the coalition and its US ally investigate what went wrong and who is responsible,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for HRW. “Their disregard for the safety of civilians is appalling.”
The New York-based NGO said the US, by coordinating and directly assisting military operations in Yemen, is a party to the conflict and should investigate the “unlawful attacks in which it took part.”
The US has supplied the Saudis with American-made weaponry for its military intervention in Yemen and has shared intelligence to support Riyadh’s targeting decisions.
In mid-November, the US State Department approved the sale of $1.29 billion worth of laser-guided bombs to the Saudis.
Since it launched the strikes in March, the Saudi-led coalition has bombed hospitals, markets, schools, power plants, refugee camps, factories, and warehouses storing humanitarian supplies in Yemen.
HRW noted in the report that it is "unaware of any investigations by Saudi Arabia or other members of the nine-nation coalition into these or other allegedly unlawful strikes, or of any compensation for victims."
In October, Saudi Arabia successfully pressed the United Nations to abandon its proposal for a human rights inquiry investigating both sides in the war.
More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured in the conflict. The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure.
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