Coalition is cleared over Yemen attacks

Investigators have cleared a Saudi-led military alliance of human rights violations in Yemen after an inquiry into four allegations of operational misbehavior.

Medical care charity Doctors Without Borders had reported the coalition for what it described as an air mission on Sanaa airport on Dec. 8, 2020.

Joint Incident Assessment Team spokesman Mansour Al-Mansour said their investigation had concluded that the coalition’s nearest military target on that date was in Amran governorate, 22 km away. A second claim by the Panel of Experts on Yemen in January 2020 related to an alleged airstrike on a water truck in Al-Bayda governorate in April 2019.

Al-Mansour said the closest coalition forces had been operating was 158 km away in Sanaa governorate.

Al-Mansour said the team’s investigations had shown that ‘procedures were safe, following the rules of international humanitarian laws.’

Investigators also exonerated the coalition over an alleged human rights breach relating to a detention center in Saada city, northwest Yemen, reported by the UN secretary-general’s spokesman in January 2022. The team found that the site was a military target 2,400 meters south of Saada airport. Physicians for Human Rights had accused coalition forces of carrying out an airstrike on AlKarama Hospital in Taiz in March 2020 that resulted in severe damage to the building and the death of a civilian.

The hospital was on a coalition list of sites protected from attack and no air missions took place in Taiz on the date in question. Al-Mansour said the team’s investigations had shown that “procedures were safe, following the rules of international humanitarian laws.”