As Yemenis Bury Women, Children

Pompeo Says U.S. Should Not Curb Saudi Aid

Date: 15 March 2019 - 21:43

News ID: ۶۴۲۳۴

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The Trump administration opposes curbs on U.S. assistance for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, United States U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday.
"The way to alleviate the Yemeni people’s suffering isn’t to prolong the conflict by handicapping our partners in the fight,” but by giving the Saudi-led coalition the support needed to defeat Houthi Ansarullah resistance fighters and ensure just peace, Pompeo said at a news conference.
The remarks came after hundreds of mourners took part in the funeral of 17 women and children killed in a Saudi airstrike in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah earlier this week.
Mourners carried wooden coffins, painted green, to the city's Grand Mosque for prayers in Yemen's capital city of Sana'a on Thursday.
Participants chanted slogans denouncing "the Saudi aggression" and the United States and Israel collusion with the Saudi invaders.
Saudi airstrikes leveled five residential houses on Sunday, killing 10 women, 12 children and wounding another 30 people, nearly half of which were under 18.
Local sources claim 11 victims of the attack were from the same family.
Saudi warplanes also targeted ambulances, preventing rescue teams from accessing the area.
Many of those killed or wounded were transported to Sana'a.
On Wednesday, a mass women's rally also took place in the capital denouncing the Saudi attack.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015 with the goal of bringing the government of Saudi-allied former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The Saudi regime consequently launched a campaign seeking to capture Yemen's western lifeline port city of Hudaydah on June 2018 but failed after facing strong resistance from Yemeni forces.
Despite a truce agreement to end the major fighting in the city, the deal has been constantly breached by the Saudis.
The war has so far taken a heavy toll on the Yemen’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories.
According to a report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.

Yemeni mourners carry a coffin during a funeral in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a on March 14, 2019.