44 kids killed, stirring questions about U.S. policy
DAHYAN, Yemen — The boys crammed into the bus, their thin bodies packed three to a seat, with latecomers jammed in the aisle. They fidgeted with excitement about the day’s field trip, talking so loudly that a tall boy struggling to get their attention put his hands over his ears and yelled.
Hours later, most of them were dead.
During a stop for snacks in the poor village of Dahyan in northern Yemen, an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations hit nearby, blasting the bus into a jagged mass of twisted metal and scattering its human cargo — wounded, bleeding and dead — in the street below, according to witnesses and parents.
Yemeni health officials said 54 people were killed, 44 of them children, and many more were wounded.
Yemen’s conflict began in 2014 when Houthi rebels, who are aligned with Iran, seized control of the capital, Sanaa, and sent the government into exile. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia — Iran’s chief rival for power and influence in the Middle East — formed a coalition of Arab nations and launched a military intervention aimed at restoring Yemen’s government. It has so far failed to do so.
The Aug. 9 attack was particularly shocking, even for a war in which children have been the primary victims, suffering through one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with rampant malnutrition and outbreaks of cholera. The war had killed more than 10,000 people before the United Nations stopped updating the death toll two years ago.
The strike also revived questions about the coalition’s tactics and the United States’ support for the campaign.
American military leaders, exasperated by strikes that have killed civilians at markets, weddings and funerals, insist the United States is not a party to the war. Human rights organizations say the United States cannot deny its role, given that it has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to allied coalition states, provided them with intelligence and refueled their bombers in midair.
Congress has shown increasing concern about the war recently. A defense policy bill that President Trump signed Monday included a bipartisan provision that requires Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to certify that Saudi Arabia and its close ally the United Arab Emirates — the two countries leading the coalition — are taking steps to prevent civilian deaths.
In the wake of this attack, individual members of Congress have gone further, calling on the military to clarify its role in air strikes on Yemen and investigate whether the support for those strikes could expose U.S. military personnel to legal jeopardy, including for war crimes.