SANA’A (Ruptly) – Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights has censured the Saudi-led military coalition over deploying cluster bombs against a residential neighborhood in the country’s capital province of Sana’a that seriously injured members of a family.
The ministry, in a statement released by the official SABA news agency, warned that cluster munitions pose a serious danger to the lives of civilians, especially women and children, if they come in close contact with them.
A deposit of thousands of cluster bombs remains near Sana’a, captured on February 1, is being kept by Yemen’s Executive Center for Mine Action, a testament to what they say are more than 3,000 victims of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen since the invasion’s start.
The deposit outside the Yemeni capital contains various deactivated bombs and mines the center has collected since the coalition’s attacks started in March 2015.
Executive director Brigadier Ali Safra described the impact of the cluster bombs saying: “The heat of this bomb can reach between 2,500 to 3,500 degrees Celsius, it can melt bridges and cast iron.”
His colleague, monitoring director Amin Salman explained that according to their research, cluster bombs in Yemen had killed at least 1,019 people between March 26, 2015, and 2021, injuring a further 2,822, 350 of whom were children.
“Children are the ones who are most affected by cluster bombs,” he said.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
The Yemeni Ministry of Public Health stated that in January alone, coalition airstrikes killed at least 150 civilians and injured a further 350.