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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 Tuesday, after thousands protested at a mass funeral.
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 in a new toll.
The child deaths have been an embarrassment for Western governments which
supply the coalition with warplanes and other weapons and have sought to
prevent the conduct of the war being scrutinised too closely.
The coalition has promised an internal inquiry but analysts and aid groups
have voiced doubt it is ready to provide the transparency and accountability
demanded by the wider international community.
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 what the United Nations has
described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The UN Security Council called on Friday for a “credible” investigation
into the deadly strike.
But it stopped short of demanding an independent inquiry as urged by UN
chief Antonio Guterres after past probes failed to lead to any significant
reduction in the high civilian death toll from the coalition’s more than
three-year bombing campaign.
– Western powers back ally –
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. It denied any responsibility for those
deaths.
In October 2016, a coalition air strike killed 140 people at a funeral in
the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
Coalition commanders have admitted a small number of mistakes, but there
has been no public disciplinary action or changes to the rules of engagement.
Commander have accused the rebels of using civilians as human shields.
The coalition initially called the strike on the bus a “legitimate
military action” in response to a rebel missile attack on the Saudi city of
Jizan on Wednesday.
But as photographs of dazed and bloodied children flooding into hospitals
were beamed around the world, it was forced to concede to an investigation.
Western government have condemned the civilian deaths, but they remain
political and military backers of Saudi Arabia, which is a regional ally and
spends billions of dollars on arms from the United States, Britain and
France.
During US-led air campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2001,
Western forces occasionally admitted “collateral damage” when civilians were
killed unintentionally.
But they too resisted independent investigations into the circumstances of
major errors.
Key Saudi coalition ally, the United Arab Emirates, said Monday that the
child deaths were a manifestation of the “ugly” side of war for which both
sides were to blame.
“Unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation,” the UAE’s
minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said, adding that those
calling for independent investigations should instead urge tighter rules of
engagement.
BSS/AFP/RY/1612 hrs