Group calls Yemen airstrike a war crime
CAIRO — An airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen that killed dozens of people last month is an “apparent war crime,” an international rights group said Sunday.
The report came days after U.N. human-rights experts said all sides in the fighting may have been responsible for committing war crimes in the 3½-year conflict.
The coalition backing Yemen’s internationally recognized government expressed regret Saturday and pledged to hold accountable those found to be responsible for the airstrike. At least 51 people, including 40 children, were killed, and 79 others, including 56 children, were wounded.
The U.S. State Department on Sunday welcomed the coalition’s statement as “an important first step toward full transparency and accountability.” It urged all sides of the conflict to “abide by the Law of Armed Conflict, to mitigate harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure, and thoroughly investigate and ensure accountability for any violations.”
Human Rights Watch said it spoke by phone to 14 witnesses, including nine children, who said that shortly before 8:30 a.m. Aug. 9, a bomb fell on the market in Dhahyan, a town north of Saada in Houthi-controlled northwestern Yemen, 37 miles from the Saudi border.
The bomb landed a few yards from a bus packed with boys on an excursion organized by a mosque to visit the graves of men who had been killed in fighting, the group said. The bus was parked outside a grocery store where the driver had gone to buy water for the children, the group said.
Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher for the group, urged the U.S. and other countries to “immediately stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening the independent U.N. inquiry into violations in Yemen, or risk being complicit in future atrocities.”