Saudi Arabia hits another school in Yemen

RASA - Saudi pilots have launched yet another airstrike on a school in the Yemeni province of Ta’izz, with no information immediately available on possible casualties.

News ID: 422854

Date: 22 August 2016 - 14:12

RNA - According to Yemen’s al-Masirah television, the air raid hit the al-Rawd school in the district of Dabab in western Ta’izz early on Monday.

In the war Saudi Arabia has launched on Yemen, the Saudi forces have been targeting schools, hospitals, residential buildings, roads, markets and refugee camps.

The war was launched in late March 2015, killing about 10,000 people so far, according to internal sources.

Back in June, the United Nations (UN) put Saudi Arabia on a blacklist of countries that kill and maim children. It concluded in a report that Riyadh had been responsible for 60 percent of the 785 deaths of children in the Saudi war on Yemen in 2015. A few days later, however, the world body announced that Saudi Arabia would be taken off the list pending a joint review with Saudi Arabia.

In rare remarks after the de-listing, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted that the decision had been made under “undue pressure” from Saudi Arabia.

Cowardice in the skies

Reports by media outlets in the United States — which has offered intelligence support for the Saudi war by helping Saudi forces acquire “targets” — have pointed to the incompetence as well as cowardice on the part of the Saudi pilots conducting airstrikes as some of the reasons why indiscriminate bombing occurs in Yemen.

A March 13 article on The New York Times cited “American officials” as pointing to “the ability of Saudi pilots, who were inexperienced in flying missions... and fearful of enemy ground fire.”

“As a result,” the article read, “they (the pilots) flew at high altitudes to avoid the threat below. But flying high also reduced the accuracy of their bombing and increased civilian casualties, American officials said.”

“American advisers suggested how the pilots could safely fly lower, among other tactics. But the airstrikes still landed on markets, homes, hospitals, factories and ports, and are responsible for the majority of the [then] 3,000 civilian deaths during the yearlong war, according to the United Nations,” the Times article further read.

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