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UN: Some Saudi-led coalition air strikes in Yemen may amount to war crimes

August 28, 2018 at 3:22 pm

Air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen have caused heavy civilian casualties and some may amount to war crimes, UN human rights experts said today.

The expert panel also said that fighters of the Houthi movement had fired missiles into Saudi Arabia and shelled the Yemeni city of Taiz. It accused them of committing torture and deploying child soldiers, both war crimes.

Saudi Arabia is leading a Western-backed alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab states trying to restore the internationally recognised government of Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, ousted from the capital Sanaa by the Iran-aligned Houthis in 2015.

The experts said they did not examine the United States and Britain, who supply weapons and intelligence to the alliance, or Iranian support for the Houthis but other UN bodies were doing so. They urged all states to restrict arms sales to help end the war.

I think it fair to say, that of those parties that we have investigated – and we have not been able to look at for example Al-Qaeda and Daesh who are also involved in Yemen – of those parties, none have clean hands

panel member Charles Garraway told a news conference.

The report to the UN Human Rights Council was the first United Nations investigation into possible war crimes in Yemen although international human rights groups have regularly documented abuses. It was released ahead of UN peace talks between Hadi’s government and Houthis scheduled for 6 September in Geneva.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the war in Yemen and 8.4 million are on the brink of famine, the panel said.

“Coalition air strikes have caused most of the documented civilian casualties. In the past three years, such air strikes have hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and even medical facilities,” it said.

READ: UN calls for impartial investigation in Yemen

Coalition forces have imposed severe restrictions on Red Sea ports and Sanaa airport, depriving Yemenis of vital supplies, which may also constitute international crimes, the experts said.

United Arab Emirates (UAE) personnel and proxy forces which are part of the coalition have raped detainees and migrants, they said.

The Saudi-led coalition said it had referred the U.N. report to its legal team for review.

“The Coalition will take an appropriate position on this matter and make an announcement about it once the legal team submits its observations,” it said in a statement.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash, said the report merited a response. But he added the region needed to be preserved from “Iranian encroachment”.

Houthi officials could not immediately be reached for comment.