The resistance that the Yemeni people have shown in the face of years-long aggression by the Saudi-led coalition has prevented Riyadh and its allies from invading the war-ravaged and impoverished Arab country, says a political analyst. RNA - Hussain al-Bukhaiti, a Yemeni activist and political commentator from Sana’a, made the remark during a Thursday edition of Press TV’s The Debate program while commenting on a recent attack by the Saudi-led coalition that targeted Yemen’s northern al-Jawf province and left more than 30 civilians dead and many more wounded.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said 19 children were among those civilians killed in the air raids carried out by Saudi-led military aircraft last Saturday.
The UN children's agency called on Yemen’s warring sides in a statement to put an end to the ongoing conflict, saying that the “worrying escalation of violence over the past few weeks is a harsh reminder that children in Yemen continue to carry the heaviest burden of the conflict.”
UNICEF also denounced as a “tragedy” the Saudi-led coalition attack on the crisis-hit country.
The Saudi-led aerial attacks in al-Jawf came hours after Yemeni air defense units managed to intercept and shoot down a Tornado multi-role combat aircraft of the Royal Saudi Air Force in the same area with an advanced surface-to-air missile.
“There is another major problem that the United States and Saudi Arabia are actually recruiting al-Qaeda and the United Arab Emirates to fight… This shows that the entire thing is to destroy Yemen, to make al-Qaeda exist in Yemen like they did in Syria and Iraq, that’s why the Saudis have failed and they cannot do anything and the Yemenis have to respond to all that,” he added.
Kim Sharif, the director of Human Rights for Yemen from London, was the other panelist invited to The Debate and said international organizations sided with Saudi Arabia and its allied in their odious crimes and atrocities in the Arab country.
“There is a lot of money involved, a lot of political game play is involved and organizations such as UNICEF will tell you that they can’t condemn in strongest terms or take further steps because they have to maintain neutrality; the truth is that their behavior has consistently shown itself to be siding with the Saudi-led coalition for the past five years,” Sharif said.
“Expert reports indicate that the majority of these war crimes have been committed by the Saudi-led coalition and the elements attached to them,” she added.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi -- a staunch ally of Riyadh -- back to power and crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have purchased billions of dollars' worth of weapons from the United States, France and the United Kingdom for use in the war on Yemen.
The Saudi-led coalition has been widely criticized for the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign. The alliance has carried out nearly 20,500 air raids in Yemen, according to data collected by the Yemen Data Project.
The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.