Air strikes kill 18,000 since 2015, U.N. says

CAIRO — A U.N. panel said Wednesday that at least 18,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed or wounded by air strikes since the country’s war escalated in 2015.

In a report presented to the Human Rights Council, a group of experts named by the United Nations said that Yemen’s people have been subjected to some 10 air strikes a day, a total of more than 23,000 since March 2015.

The report, which cited the Yemen Data Project for the air strike figures, found both sides in the war to have violated international law. The project, a local data gathering operation, attributes all of the air strikes to the Saudi-led coalition.

Meanwhile the coalition’s rivals, the Houthi rebels, have shelled neighborhoods, camps for the displaced, an airport and markets, leading to the deaths of dozens, according to the U.N. experts.

Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthis took control of the capital of Sanaa and much of the northern part of the country, forcing the government of President Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi-led coalition, backed at the time by the U.S., entered the war in March 2015 to try restore Hadi to power, and threw its support behind his internationally backed government. Despite a relentless air campaign and ground fighting, the war has deteriorated largely into a stalemate, also spawning the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The U.S. has since suspended its direct involvement in the conflict.

Neither the Saudi-led coalition nor the Houthis immediately responded to requests for comment on the report. In the past, both have leveled charges at their opponents for bearing the greater responsibility for civilian deaths.

The true toll of the conflict remains in question, due to limited access to some of the remote areas in which it is conducted. In December 2020, the U.N.’s humanitarian body said that the war had caused more than 200,000 deaths, including more than 100,000 from indirect causes such as starvation and preventable causes due to lack of basic services. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which collects conflict data internationally, says that the war has killed 144,620 people since 2015.

The U.N. report pointed toward the air strikes having been committed by the Saudiled coalition, without directly accusing it.

The Houthis do not have a functional air force, but they have launched attacks by explosive-laden drones that have left causalities among civilians. They rely on ground-fired missiles and rockets, largely.