Saudi-UAE Coalition Airstrikes in Yemen

Missile launchers that the Saudi-Emirati coalition says

it bombed in Saada Governorate.

Houthi fighters, the coalition's military spokesman says,

were targeted in response to shelling of Jazan on Wednesday night

with a ballistic missile. That was the account given by

Saudi-Emirati coalition spokesman, Staff Colonel Turki Al-Maliki, of the airstrikes

carried out by coalition jets on Saada, killing and injuring more than

one hundred people, most of them children under the age of

fifteen. The Saudi-Emirati coalition's account

contradicts in every detail the images broadcast by international news agencies

and the facts on the ground recounted by eyewitnesses,

as well as the account reported by the International Committee

of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross says Saudi-Emirati coalition missiles

directly struck a bus carrying dozens of children

as it was passing through a popular market in the city of Dahyan, in Saada.

Official figures document the deaths of at least fifty civilians,

Thirty children were among them, their remains scattered throughout the market.

What is notable this time is that the Saudi-Emirati coalition no longer

denies responsibility for the raids, or even claims that they

were carried out by mistake. The coalition spokesperson confirms that

the airstrikes on Saada were legitimate military action

carried out in accordance with humanitarian law.

The raids on Saada came just days after the Saudi-Emirati coalition bombed

the area around Al-Thawra Hospital in Hodeidah, where

dozens of civilians were killed. The Saudi-Emirati coalition is

one of the parties to the conflict in Yemen listed on the UN blacklist

of states that violate children's rights in conflict

zones, as the UN holds the coalition

responsible for the deaths of 60 percent of Yemen's children, while

Human Rights Watch documents thousands of civilian casualties as a result of

dozens of indiscriminate strikes by coalition jets across

all of Yemen's governorates, without exception.

Yemenis see the continued massacres as evidence of a state of

recklessness and indifference by the coalition toward the lives of

civilians. These attacks are soon closed without

measures to hold those responsible accountable or an

international investigation, not even by the Yemeni government.

The Houthis, meanwhile, do not hesitate to exploit these attacks

to recruit more fighters, which raises the voice

of war above any calls for dialogue and a political solution.

Yemenis blame international silence for turning Yemen into

a closed hell, as the Saudi-Emirati coalition persists in

violating the ethics of conflict and the laws of war without any

international action beyond condemnation.

Despite the Saudi-Emirati coalition's heavy record of violations

amounting to war crimes in Yemen, major countries such as France

Britain, and the United States have continued supplying weapons

to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Western countries insist that they remain aloof

from the battlefield in Yemen and limit their intervention only

on humanitarian aid through international organizations.

Politically, it supports the efforts of international envoy Martin Griffiths,

that dialogue is the only way to end the world's worst

humanitarian crisis.