UN: Saudi-led coalition kills 109 Yemeni civilians in 10 days

GENEVA: A Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen has killed 109 civilians in air strikes in the past 10 days, including 54 at a crowded market and 14 members of one family on a farm, the top United Nations official in the country said yesterday.

UN resident coordinator Jamie McGoldrick called the fighting futile and absurd, an unusually direct criticism of the war in which the coalition, backed by the United States, Britain and others, is fighting the Iran-allied Houthi armed movement.

Citing reports from the UN Human Rights Office, McGoldrick said the air strikes hit a crowded market in the Al Hayma sub-district of Attazziah in Taiz governorate on Tuesday, killing 54 and injuring 32. Eight of the dead and six of the injured were children.

On the same day an air strike on a farm in the Attohayta district of Hodeidah governorate killed 14, and air strikes elsewhere killed 41 civilians and injured 43 over the past 10 days.

“These incidents prove the complete disregard for human life that all parties, including the Saudi-led coalition, continue to show in this absurd war that has only resulted in the destruction of the country and the incommensurate suffering of its people, who are being punished as part of a futile military campaign by both sides,” McGoldrick said.

Under international law, the warring sides must spare civilians and civilian infrastructure, he added.

The UN has no up-to-date estimate of the death toll in Yemen, having said in August last year that, according to medical centres, at least 10,000 people had been killed.

The UN says the conflict is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with about eight million people on the brink of famine, a cholera epidemic that has infected a million people, and economic collapse in what was already one of the Arab world’s poorest countries. Reuters