Landmines new scourge in Yemen
KHOKHA, Yemen: For Imad and his sister Alia, life will never be the same after their father was killed by a landmine and they had to leave their endangered home in Yemen’s western Hodeida province.
With their house surrounded by the deadly munitions, the two children and their mother, left Al Dunain village and headed for shelter at the Al Waara camp in the Khokha district, some 30 km from the town of Hays. Withdrawing Ansarullah fighters had dotted the area with mines, their mother Fethiyeh Fartout said.
And it was while her husband made his way to market that he was killed on a road “riddled with landmines”.
“The Ansarullah then told us to either leave the house or risk being killed,” she said.
The family is just one of millions caught up in a dragging war in which Ansarullah fighters have been fighting for more than three years against the Yemeni government, which is backed by a Saudi-led military coalition.
Rights groups say both sides have committed potential war crimes in the conflict which has killed an estimated 10,000 people, mostly civilians.
While the coalition has come under fire for air raids that have killed civilians, including children, in Ansarullah areas, the fighters have been accused of widespread and indiscriminate use of landmines.
Yemen is a signatory to the international Mine Ban Treaty, which came into force in 1999, and aims to eliminate landmines and clear up vast tracts of polluted land. And indiscriminate use of landmines is deemed a war crime.
While the Ansarullah fighters have made no media comments about landmines, in a letter to Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2017 the foreign ministry in Sanaa denied using landmines or having stockpiles, adding they were “vigilant in abiding by commitments” under the treaty.
But for Fartout and her children there is no way to return home, even if they tried, said her father Jamal Fartout.
“The Ansarullah planted landmines everywhere, and their explosives destroyed the roads,” he said.
“All the roads leading back to our home are lined with explosives.” HRW said in June that landmines in Yemen were hindering aid access and entrapping people.
“Ansarullah fighters have repeatedly laid antipersonnel, antivehicle and improvised mines as they withdrew from areas in Aden, Taez, Marib and, more recently, along Yemen’s western coast,” the HRW said.
In July, the Washington Institute said that, while landmines have plagued Yemen for decades amid different conflicts, the Ansarullah fighters are using them today “at an astonishingly high rate.”