Land mines in Yemen block Saudi-led assault

NEHIM, Yemen — Desperate to break through enemy lines, Saudi-backed forces fighting in Yemen are sending untrained soldiers to clear minefields, sometimes using only their bayonets.

“I removed two and the third one exploded,” said Sultan Hamad, a 39-year-old Yemeni soldier who lost a leg clearing mines on the front line near Marib, an ancient city in central Yemen. He was among more than a half dozen soldiers waiting at a clinic in Marib to be fitted for prosthetic limbs.

Nearly four years after Saudi Arabia plunged into Yemen’s civil war, Saudi and Yemeni commanders say hundreds of thousands of unmarked land mines planted by their opponents, the Houthis, have emerged as perhaps their most formidable defense.

The hidden explosives, the commanders say, have helped keep the conflict close to a standstill despite the superior air power and other resources of the Saudi-led coalition.

The mines have also killed as many as 920 civilians and wounded thousands, according to mine removal experts. Rights groups and other monitors say the minefields will leave Yemen riddled with buried explosives that could kill or maim unsuspecting civilians for decades before the devices can all be removed, as they have in Afghanistan, Colombia and Cambodia.

“The scale of the problem is exceptionally large, and the impact is horrendous,” said Loren Persi Vicentic of Landmine Monitor, an independent nonprofit group. “Most of the casualties we see reported are civilians.”

A Western mine-removal company hired by the Saudis estimates that the Houthis have laid more than 1 million mines, more than one for every 30 Yemenis and a concentration as high as that in any other country since World War II.

Crouching behind a low stone wall over the edge of a ridge in the district of Nehim on a recent overcast afternoon, Brig. Gen. Mohsen al-Khabi could almost make out the distant lights of Sanaa, the Houthi-controlled capital, just 23 miles away.

But those 23 miles might as well be 500, he said. The Houthis had planted so many land mines among the winding roads and scattered settlements of the valley, the advance of his Yemeni forces had all but ground to halt, stuck for three years in virtually the same position.

“The problem is the enemy’s inhumane weapons, the land mines and improvised explosives,” he said.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit the use of hidden mines and anti-personnel mines.

The Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, did not respond to questions for this article. Despite the civilian casualties, Houthi officials have said that they use only anti-tank mines and only on battlefields, not mines triggered by human footsteps or in civilian areas.

“This is a war, so what do you expect us to do?” Brig. Gen. Yahia al-Sarie, a Houthi officer, told The Associated Press in December. “Receive the other side with flowers?”

During a trip to Yemen last month arranged by the Saudi-led coalition, the New York Times examined scores of defused land mines and interviewed doctors, soldiers and victims about them.

Saudi Arabia may be eager to call attention to the Houthi mines to counterbalance allegations that the kingdom and its principal ally, the United Arab Emirates, have committed war crimes by conducting airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians and imposing a partial blockade that has threatened Yemen with famine. Some of their airstrikes have dropped cluster munitions, which can pose a long-term threat similar to that of land mines.

But all or almost all of the land mines and other explosive devices buried in Yemen appear to have been planted by the Houthis, independent monitors say. Mining is a tactic typically employed by a military force defending territory or retreating from it, as the Houthis have been since the Saudi-led intervention began.

The Saudis also say the mines provide new evidence of Houthi ties to the kingdom’s regional rival, Iran. Over the last four years, the Saudis have recovered several Houthi missile parts that Saudi and Western officials say came from Iran.

Now an independent group, Conflict Armament Research, has concluded that certain components of mines or similar victimtriggered bombs made by the Houthis also “originate in Iran.” The group’s report was financed in part by the United Arab Emirates but also by Western governments and the European Union.

Saudi military officers said the Houthis have also planted land mines inside Saudi Arabia, which may raise questions about the effectiveness of the kingdom’s border security.

The Houthis, said Brig. Gen. Faisal bin Yahia Hakami, the Saudi officer in charge of the border area around Jazan, “sneak inside the border of Saudi Arabia, they plant land mines and they run away.”

He said there were “a lot, a lot of military casualties inside the border.”

Last month, a Houthi mine blew up a family car inside Jazan province, killing a 10-year-old child, according to a Saudi military spokesman and Saudi news reports.

Officials told the Saudi news agency that heavy rainfall had carried the mine across the border from Yemen.