Yemen's Hudaydah goes through another day of airstrikes

Rasa - The military coalition led by the Saudi regime has conducted heavy airstrikes on the Yemeni city of Hudaydah, which has become a flash point where cluster bombs earlier dropped by the coalition warplanes killed one person and injured three others.

News ID: 438857

Date: 28 July 2018 - 21:47

RNA - Residents said the airstrikes began in the early hours of Friday and targeted a police base in the city center and a plastics factory in the north of the city. The districts of Zubaid and Tahita, located in southern Hudaydah, were also bombarded.

Yemen’s al-Masirah TV channel said in a posting on its Twitter account that the warplanes had also attacked a radio station and a fishing pier.

"Coalition warplanes conducted two strikes on a fishing dock and market in Hudaydah, and the yard of the Hudaydah radio building, which was damaged by the shrapnel," one resident said.

There was no immediate report of possible casualties and the extent of damage inflicted in the airstrikes, which are seen as an apparent resumption of a campaign against Hudaydah after the coalition announced a pause earlier this month amid reports of stiff resistance from the fighters of the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

Backed by Saudi-led airstrikes, Emirati forces and militants loyal to the former Yemeni government launched the Hudaydah assault on June 13 despite warnings that it would compound the impoverished nation’s humanitarian crisis.

In a post on his Twitter account on July 1, Anwar Gargash, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, said the pause was meant to provide an opportunity for the UN to continue with efforts aimed at resolving the conflict in Yemen.

Humanitarian organizations have warned that the Hudaydah operation threatens to cut off essential supplies to millions of Yemeni people. More than 70 percent of Yemen's imports pass through Hudaydah's docks.

The coalition claims the Houthis are using Hudaydah for weapons delivery, an allegation rejected by the Ansarullah fighters.

Riyadh has been at the helm of the deadly campaign against Yemen since March 2015. However, it has failed to fulfill its purpose of the war on Yemen, which was to reinstate the former Riyadh-friendly government and undermine Ansarullah.

Cluster bombs go off in Hudaydah

According to Press TV, Al-Masirah reported a civilian was killed and three others injured on Friday after an undetonated cluster bomb went off in Zubaid.

The Saudi war machine has already used cluster bombs across Yemen on multiple occasions despite the inherently indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions. Various rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have time and again reported and criticized the use of cluster bombs in Yemen.

Cluster bombs are banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international treaty that addresses the humanitarian consequences and unacceptable harm caused to civilians by cluster munitions through a categorical prohibition and a framework for action. The weapons can contain dozens of smaller bomblets, dispersing over vast areas, often killing and maiming civilians long after they are dropped.

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