Yemen slams removal of Saudi-led coalition from UN blacklist of child-killers as ‘ineffaceable crime’

A member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council has sharply censured the United Nations over its decision to remove the Saudi-led coalition from a blacklist for killing and injuring children in the conflict-plagued Arab country, saying the crime that cannot be effaced from its record.

“Delisting Saudi Arabia from the annual UN report confirms the chaos in the world body and its disregard for humanitarian standards,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi wrote in a post published on his official Twitter page on Tuesday.

He denounced the UN’s step as an “ineffaceable crime,” saying it took place at the same time when Saudi Arabia and the United States perpetrated a new massacre in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada.

The Yemeni official was referring to the Saudi-led air raids that targeted a civilian car in Sa’ada on Monday, killing 13 people, including women and children.

Also on Monday evening, Saudi warplanes pounded some positions in Kataf district of Sa'ada Province. Two mine-clearance personnel and a medic lost their lives in the airstrike.

Saudi-led coalition kills 11 in northern Yemen, launches 43 raids in 4 provinces

The US-backed aggression force launched dozens of air raids on four provinces across the country.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took away the Saudi-led coalition engaged in an atrocious military campaign against Yemen from a blacklist, several years after it was first named and shamed for killing and injuring children in the impoverished country.

The move prompted immediate protests from human rights groups worldwide.

Jo Becker, the advocacy director of the children’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, argued that Guterres “is adding a new level of shame to his 'list of shame' by removing the Saudi-led coalition and ignoring the UN's own evidence of continued grave violations against children.”

Adrianne Lapar, director of Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, also said by removing the Saudi-led coalition “the secretary-general sends the message that powerful actors can get away with killing children.”

Yemeni drones target Saudi military site

Meanwhile, Yemeni armed forces say they have carried out a drone strike against Saudi military targets in Asir, southwest of Saudi Arabia.

Spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said Tuesday that five Qasef-2K drones had been used to conduct the operation.

"By the grace and generosity of God, our air force carried out a massive operation on fighter jets' hangars, armories and sensitive military targets in Khamis Mushait," on Monday night, Sare’e said in a statement.

The official explained that the operation came in response to the latest military escalation by Saudi Arabia and its continuous massacre of the Yemeni people.

Saudi Arabia continues its indiscriminate bombardment of Yemeni cities.

‘Saudi Arabia runs secret prison in Yemen’s Hadhramaut’

Meanwhile, a distinguished Saudi pseudonymous activist who uses his platform to leak sensitive documents about members of the House of Saud, has taken the wraps off a secret prison run by the Riyadh regime in Yemen’s largest and eastern province of Hadhramaut.

Mujtahidd, in a post published on his Twitter page, said the Saudi military has committed serious violations against Yemeni detainees, torturing a large number of them to death.

UAE using gas facility run by Total as secret prison in Yemen: Le Monde

The United Arab Emirates is running a secret prison at a gas facility operated by the French group Total in southern Yemen, according to information confirmed by France’s Le Monde daily.

“I received a report from former detainees in a secret prison run by Saudi forces in Yemen about what is going on in there,” he said.

Mujtahidd went on to describe the conditions of the detention center as not even fit for an animal, emphasizing that the Saudi-run prison is subject neither to Saudi or Yemeni law nor international supervision.

The activist added that hundreds of Yemenis, if not thousands, had been incarcerated in the prison and subjected to various forms of torture.

Mujtahidd called on human rights organizations and the international community to pressure the Saudi regime into allowing international monitoring of the prison.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crush Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.

More than half of Yemen’s hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or closed during the war by the Saudi-led coalition, which is supported militarily by the UK, US and other Western nations.

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