TEHRAN - Iran’s Secretary General of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights to United Nations Kazem Gharibabadi in a letter has deplored the loss of scores of lives in a Saudi-led aerial raid against Yemen, calling on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to use all available means to hold to account the perpetrators and sponsors of the criminal act.
“On January 21 and as many people around the world were overwhelmed with joy and happiness, the international community witnessed a criminal, cruel, inhuman and unjust act that contravened all principles and fundamentals of international law, especially international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL),” Gharibabadi wrote in a letter addressed to Bachelet.
He added that more than 100 people were killed and over 260 others wounded when the U.S.-backed and Saudi-led war coalition launched an airstrike against a detention center in Yemen’s northwestern city of Sa’ada, noting that three children were among the fatalities.
Gharibabadi highlighted that the Riyadh-led military alliance has carried out more than 839 air raids against ordinary Yemeni people, residential buildings, and public infrastructure so far this month.
“Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited under the international humanitarian law. The principles of segregation, proportion, and necessity are not observed at all during such barbaric attacks,” the rights official said, emphasizing that a failure to comply with the principles will lead to war crimes and subsequent referral to relevant international authorities.
Gharibabadi underscored that more than 70% of the Yemeni people need support, and more than 90% of the population is dependent on medicine and food imported through humanitarian aid.
“As a result of obstacles created by the coalition of aggression, the dispatch of such aids to Yemen is facing serious difficulties. If we take into account the death of 370,000 innocent Yemenis, most of them women and children, genocide
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