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40 children killed in Yemen bus strike: new Red Cross toll
SANAA, Aug 14, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Forty children were among 51 people killed
in a Saudi-led coalition air strike on a bus in rebel-held northern Yemen,
the Red Cross said in a new toll Tuesday.
Fifty-six children were also among the 79 people wounded in the Thursday
strike on Saada province, a rebel stronghold that borders Saudi Arabia, the
International Committee of the Red Cross said.
The new casualty toll came after a mass funeral was held for many of the
dead children on Monday at which thousands vented anger against Riyadh and
Washington.
Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi
Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.
The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 as Huthi rebel
fighters closed in on the last bastion of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s
government.
The conflict has killed nearly 10,000 people since then, the vast majority
of them civilians, and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,
according to the United Nations.
The UN Security Council called on Friday for a “credible” investigation
into the deadly strike.
But it stopped short of demanding an independent investigation, and experts
and aid groups voiced doubts that a promised coalition probe would provide
transparency or accountability.
The coalition has been repeatedly blamed for bombing civilians, including a
strike on a wedding hall in the Red Sea coastal town of Mokha in September
2015, in which 131 people died. The coalition denied responsibility.
In October 2016, a coalition air strike killed 140 people at a funeral in
the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
The coalition has admitted a small number of mistakes, but accuses the
rebels of using civilians as human shields.
The high civilian death toll has been an embarrassment for Washington and
other Western governments which supply the coalition with warplanes and other
weapons.
But Washington continues to provide replacement munitions as well as
intelligence and refuelling support for coalition aircraft.
BSS/AFP/GMR/1339 hrs