HRW Asks for End to Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia After School Bus Attack in Yemen

Rasa - The Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for an end to all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia following the bombing of a school bus last month that killed 51 people, including 40 children.

News ID: 439352

Date: 02 September 2018 - 21:07

RNA - The rights group called the attack an apparent war crime and stated that it places arms suppliers at "risk of complicity in war crimes", Middle East News reported.

HRW's statement, released on Sunday, came just hours after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates admitted the bombing was "unjustified". A probe, conducted by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Ansarullah, concluded on Saturday that "mistakes" were made in the air raid in Sa'ada province on August 9. The coalition, which initially defended the bombing saying it hit a "legitimate military target", has now pledged to hold to account those responsible for the attack.

HRW said it received photographs and videos of munition fragments that a lawyer based in Sana'a, South of Saada, said were at the site.

Markings visible on photos and videos of one of the remnants - a guidance fin for a GBU-12 Paveway II bomb, an aerial laser-guided bomb - show it was produced by Pentagon's top weapons supplier Lockheed Martin, according to the rights group.

HRW also added that while it could not confirm the remnants were found at the site of the attack, images of damage from the scene are consistent with the detonation of a large, impact-fused aerial bomb.

"The Saudi-led coalition's attack on a bus full of young boys adds to its already gruesome track record of killing civilians at weddings, funerals, hospitals, and schools in Yemen," Bill Van Esveld, senior children's rights researcher at HRW, said, adding that "countries with knowledge of this record that are supplying more bombs to the Saudis will be complicit in future deadly attacks on civilians".

Munitions experts have confirmed that the bomb used by the Saudi-led coalition in recent attack on a school bus in Yemen that killed dozens of children had been supplied by the United States.

The experts told CNN that the bomb was a 227-kilogram laser-guided Mark 82 bomb, noting that the numbers on the weapon identified major US military contractor Lockheed Martin as its maker.

The report also said that the bomb used in the Sa'ada airstrike was very similar to the one that hit a funeral hall in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, in October 2016, killing 155 people and injuring 525 others.

As soon as a bus carrying school children entered a busy market in the Sa’ada town of Zahyn last Thursday, Saudi fighters targeted it. At least 51 civilians have lost their lives and 80 others sustained injuries, most of whom were students, sparking outrage from international human rights groups and UN officials.

The UN announced that there is no justification for Saudi Arabia's latest massacre in Yemen which claimed the lives of scores of civilians, mostly of whom were children.

"What we are seeing today are the victims of the airstrike. The terrible human cost of the airstrike and of the war. The entire world condemns this," UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen Lise Grande said during a trip to the war-torn country.

Grande added that the UN Secretary General has called for an "immediate transparent, comprehensive, independent investigation", into the deadly attack on civilians.

Meanwhile, UNICEF's resident representative in Yemen, Meritxell Relano, has called for an end to Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen and continued massacring of children.

"In the recent attack in Sa’ada, I have visited at least 13 children that have injuries and I hope that they are good to go very soon and back to play, and play football, and back to their normal lives because this has been a very shocking attacks, terrifying, which will leave them not only physical injuries but also psychological injuries," Relano stated.

Yemeni Human Rights Minister Alia al-Shaabi strongly condemned the brutal assault of Riyadh and its allies on a school children's bus, stating that the Saudi-led coalition sees Yemeni women and children as strategic targets.

"The Saudi aggressors have made the Yemeni people, children, old men and women as military targets," she said, adding that "we welcome the condemnations of international organizations and the United Nations for the crime and call for the formation of an impartial and independent international commission of inquiry".

Al-Shaabi revealed that the missile used by the coalition to hit the bus carrying Yemeni kids was exactly the same type which killed some 155 people at a funeral ceremony in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, in 2016, and was made in the United States.

At least 155 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in several airstrikes on a funeral reception in Sana'a in early October 2016, according to health officials. The death toll was one of the largest in any single incident since Saudi Arabia began military operations aganist against its impoverished Southern neighbor in March 2015.

Al-Shaabi's point of view on the issue echoes an Ansarullah official's remarks who said the bombs used by the Riyadh-led coalition on Thursday attack was made in the US and was MK-82 which had earlier been used to pound a wedding ceremony in Hajjah province and a prison in al-Zaidiyeh.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had described the war in Yemen as a “war on children”, given the extensive damage that the conflict has caused to children in Yemen.

It also stressed that 2017 was the worst year for the children in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 17,500 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

Reports by independent world bodies have warned that the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen has driven the impoverished country towards humanitarian disaster, as Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country.

Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fuelled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods.

A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.

Besides the US, the UK and France have also been providing weapons and intelligence to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the course of the unprovoked war.

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