‘Possible war crimes by all sides in Yemen conflict’

GENEVA: All sides in Yemen’s bloody conflict may have committed war crimes, United Nations investigators said yesterday, highlighting deadly air strikes, rampant sexual violence and the recruitment of young children as soldiers.

In their first report, a team of UN-mandated investigators said they had “reasonable grounds to believe that the parties to the armed conflict in Yemen have committed a substantial number of violations of international humanitarian law”.

Many of these violations may amount to “war crimes” the report said, adding that the investigators had identified a number of alleged perpetrators.

The devastating conflict in Yemen has left nearly 10,000 people dead since March 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition intervened to fight Houthi rebels closing in on the last bastion of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s government.

The conflict in what was already one of the world’s poorest countries has caused what the UN had described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN’s so-called Group of Independent Eminent International and Regional Experts, which was created by the UN Human Rights Council last September, detailed a long line of abuses committed by all parties to the conflict.

“There is little evidence of any attempt by parties to the conflict to minimise civilian casualties,” said the group’s chairman Kamel Jendoubi in a statement.

The report concluded that “coalition air strikes have caused most of the documented civilian casualties”, pointing to a large number of strikes on residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and medical facilities.

“The specific cases investigated by the Group of Experts raise serious concerns about the targeting process applied by the coalition”, the report said, pointing out that in many cases there were no apparent military targets in the vicinity of the attacks.