US, UK are in Saudi ‘command center’ in war against Yemen: Riyadh

Saudi Arabia says the US and UK military advisers are in command room with Riyadh in its war against Yemen, and are working alongside the Saudi forces in bombing the impoverished country.

Following a meeting with a number of British ministers and US Secretary of State John Kerry in London, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir noted that the military officials are well aware of the so-called “target lists.”

“We have British officials and American officials and officials from other countries in our command and control center. They know what the target list is and they have a sense of what it is that we are doing and what we are not doing,” the Saudi foreign minister told journalists on Thursday.

Saudi authorities “pick” the targets, not them, Jubeir further said, adding, “I don’t know technically exactly what part of the process they are in, but I do know they are aware of the target lists.”

He also said the Riyadh government is “transparent” in sharing the public with what it is doing in Yemen. “We have nothing to hide."

The Saudi foreign minister also rejected claims that the Arab kingdom’s military campaign was meant to bomb “civilians indiscriminately,” saying the claim was not supported by “facts.”

However, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and many other rights groups have provided various documents supported by facts and figures to prove that thousands of civilians have been the direct target of the Saudi war machine.

In a Tuesday report, for instance, the UN said that between March and December last year the civilian casualties in Yemen reached 8,119. It also reiterated that Saudi warplanes used the banned cluster bombs on Yemeni people during the course of war. Last Friday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon also slammed the use of cluster munitions “in populated areas” and called it a “war crime” due to their indiscriminate nature.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned about the dire situation of Yemeni patients and numerous attacks on hospitals there, saying “drugs, medication and medical supplies have been prevented from crossing frontlines into hospitals which desperately need these supplies.”

The Saudi military has also blocked the flow of relief aid into Yemen, creating an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the Arabian Peninsula state.

Riyadh began the campaign against Yemen in late March 2015. The strikes are supposedly meant to undermine the Ansarullah movement and restore power to the fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi. According to reports, the war has so far claimed the lives of more than 7,500 people and inflicted injuries to more than 14,000 others.

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