Yemen school bus bombing one of 50 strikes on civilian vehicles this year
YEMEN - The bombing of a bus full of school children last week was just one of more than 50 airstrikes against civilian vehicles by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen so far this year, according to new data. The data also shows that the monitoring body set up in Riyadh purportedly to investigate incidents of civilian casualties has supported the Saudi military version of events in almost every case. The Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) has not issued comprehensive statistics but has instead issued periodic press statements. And according to an analysis by Human Rights Watch (HRW), out of 75 incidents where civilian casualties were reported, JIAT has admitted Saudi rules of engagement may have been broken in only two.
In 10 more cases, JIAT has conceded that civilians may have been killed in error and said that compensation would be paid, but human rights advocates said there was so far no sign of any payments being made. “None of the victims’ families we reached out to said they had been contacted,” said Kristine Bekerle, a HRW researcher, noting that the cases where compensation had been promised were up to two years old.
The 9 August airstrike obliterated a bus carrying schoolboys on a field trip in northern Yemen, leaving 40 children and 11 adults dead. The Saudi government told the UN security council that the strike would be investigated – but described it as “a legitimate military action”, saying it had targeted “Houthi leaders who were responsible for recruiting and training young children, and then sending them to battlefields”.
The schoolboys had been on the way to a cemetery where rebels were buried but survivors told journalists that was because it was one of the very few green spaces left in the whole of the northern Saada province. Parks and gardens have been destroyed in the relentless fighting.
“They came to the hospital in cars and ambulances. Dozens of children with an array of grisly wounds,” Marta Rivas Blanco, an ICRC nurse at the Al Talh hospital where the victims were taken, wrote in an account of the day for the Guardian. “Some were screaming, some were scared, many went straight to the morgue.” (The Guardian)