Landmines by Houthis kill hundreds
cairo — An international rights group on Thursday decried the use of landmines by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the impoverished Arab country at war, saying they have killed and maimed hundreds of civilians and prevented many of the displaced from returning to their homes.
Human Rights Watch said in a new report that the rebels known as Houthis, who are allied with the forces of the country’s former president, have used land-mines in at least six provinces since March 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition launched its military campaign against them.
Steve Goose, director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, said the Houthis and forces of Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh “have been flouting the landmine ban at the expense of Yemeni civilians.”
He added that Yemen had banned land mines two decades ago.
The Saudi-led coalition has waged a campaign to dislodge the Houthis, who seized Yemen’s capital and some other areas in 2014 and forced the internationally-recognised government to leave the country.
The New York-based group cited the Landmine Monitor Initiative by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines as saying that at least 988 people were either killed or wounded by land mines in Yemen since 2015. In one of the most recent incidents, HRW said a demining team lost one of its members during a clearance operation in the Nihm Mountains outside of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in January. One team member stepped on a land mine and was killed; a second lost his two legs next day.
The rights group also cited an incident in May last year, when a young man was killed and his mother was wounded as they stepped on land mines near their home. —