HRW Report on Yemen Slams Saudi Arabia, U.S., UK

Date: 16 January 2017 - 20:18

News ID: ۳۵۶۳۸

SANAA (Dispatches) – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has blamed the Saudi regime for thousands of civilian deaths since the onset of its aerial and ground campaign against Yemen, which is strongly supported by Riyadh’s allies, particularly the U.S. and the UK.
The New York-based rights group in its annual report said at least 4,125 civilians were killed and 7,207 others wounded between March 26, 2015, when the Saudi war began, and October 10, 2016.
The report also slammed Riyadh’s military and the countries assisting it in the war for using internationally-banned weapons in their attacks against civilian targets.
According to the report, HRW had identified "six types of air-dropped and ground-launched cluster munitions in multiple locations in Yemen, including those produced in the U.S. and Brazil. Amnesty International has further documented the use of UK-made cluster munitions.”
The report further said the war "has been supported by the United States and the United Kingdom,” naming the world powers as two "key international actors” in the offensive.
Saudi Arabia unleashed the warfare to reinstall Yemen’s former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur, a dedicated Riyadh-allied figure.
The kingdom has been providing air cover to ground operations by its mercenaries operating against Yemeni armed forces.
However, the president of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council says all attempts by Saudi-backed militants to advance in Yemen’s southwestern coastal areas near the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait have been thwarted.
Saleh al-Samad said in an interview with the Beirut-based al-Mayadeen television that the mercenaries are fighting with the support of Riyadh and on behalf of the Zionist regime.
The battle in the western coastal areas "is not with the mercenaries, nor Saudi Arabia, it is a battle with Israel, primarily,” he said.
He added that Saudi Arabia is too weak to launch such a wide military campaign against Yemen without the Zionist regime’s support, pointing to recent meetings between Saudi officials and a number of Zionists.
Referring to the occupying regime’s expansion policy, Samad said the regime buys islands in Eritrea and Somalia with the aim of gaining control of the strategic waterway of Bab-al-Mandeb.
He accused Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who asked Saudi Arabia to launch war on his home country, of attempting to subjugate the Yemeni people by playing the economic card, in an apparent reference to the embargo that had been imposed on Yemen by Riyadh.