Yemeni CHILDREN were en route from picnic WHEN a SAUDI-LED airstrike hit
‘SCORES KILLED, EVEN MORE INJURED, MOST UNDER THE AGE OF 10,’ REPORTS RED CROSS
The bus had been travelling through a busy market in Dahyan district, in northern Yemen, a rebel stronghold. It was Thursday afternoon and the bus carrying children was heading back from a picnic when the driver stopped to get a drink, according to Save the Children.
It was at that moment when an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Shiite rebels hit, killing at least 50 people and wounding 77, according to rebel Health Ministry figures.
“Scores killed, even more injured, most under the age of 10,” Johannes Bruwer, head of delegation for the International Committee for the Red Cross in Yemen, stated in a Twitter post.
The Saudi-led coalition, meanwhile, insisted it was a “legitimate military action” against the rebels, known as Houthis, who had fired a missile at the kingdom’s south, killing one person and wounding 11 others.
In the aftermath of Thursday’s attack, Yemen’s rebel-run Al Masirah TV aired dramatic images of wounded children, their clothes and schoolbags covered with blood as they lay on hospital stretchers. The Red Cross said on Twitter that its team at an ICRCsupported hospital in Saada received the bodies of 29 children, all under 15 years old. It also received 48 wounded people, including 30 children, it said.
One video showed a boy covered in dirt trying to stand up and seemingly unable to move.
“My leg won’t get up,” he told the man behind the camera.
“No excuses anymore,” Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF’s regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, said on Twitter. “Does the world really need more innocent children’s lives to stop the cruel war on children in Yemen?”
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, a Houthi spokesman, accused the coalition of showing a “clear disregard for civilian life” by targeting a crowded public place.
“It is high time for these relapsing tragedies to stop in Yemen,” said Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s regional director. “No one should allow putting children in harm’s way and making them pay such an unacceptable price.”
The strike was a relatively high single-day death toll for the war, which has so far claimed the lives of about 10,000 people, crippled the country’s health system and damaged its infrastructure. Aid workers have described it as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance.
The Houthi rebels control much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. The Dahyan district hit Thursday lies close to the Saudi border.
In recent months, rebels have fired missiles into the neighbouring kingdom, including on Wednesday in an attack that killed one person. Col Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the attack in Saada targeted the rebels who had fired it.
He said it was carried out “in accordance with international and humanitarian law and customs,” and accused the rebels of using the children as human shields.
The coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power after it was driven out of Sanaa by Shia rebels.
The coalition, which receives support and funding from the U.S. and U.K., has been criticized for its often indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said U.S. officials can’t confirm all the details about the attack, but are concerned about reports of civilian deaths.
“We call on the Saudi-led coalition to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the incident,” Nauert said. “We take all credible accounts of civilian casualties very seriously.”
According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade, the U.K. has licensed US$6billion worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia since 2015.
Andrew Smith, from the organization, said: “This atrocity cannot be ignored. The U.K. government has been utterly complicit in the destruction. It has armed and supported the Saudi-led coalition right from the start.
“The death toll has spiralled and the humanitarian crisis has only got worse, and yet the arms sales have continued.” A Saudi blockade of Yemen left millions there on the brink of starvation and lacking the medicines needed to treat an outbreak of cholera.