Yemen’s human rights body: Killing Yemeni civilians with cluster bombs constitutes crime against humanity

Pars Today – Yemen’s National Human Rights Authority in Sana’a has condemned the killing of civilians in the Bani Khatab villages in Abs District using internationally banned cluster munitions.

According to Pars Today, citing IRNA, Yemen’s National Human Rights Authority on Saturday condemned the killing of civilians in the Bani Khatab villages in Abs District, Hajjah Province, by Saudi Arabia using internationally banned cluster munitions, describing it as a horrific crime.

The statement said the use of cluster munitions to bomb villages and civilian areas constituted a flagrant and deliberate violation of international human rights law and amounted to a full-scale crime.

It added that the choice of Bani Khatab village in Abs, a densely populated area inhabited by displaced people and impoverished families with no military targets, demonstrated that the Saudi enemy was deliberately pursuing a scorched-earth policy and destroying the foundations of civilian life to force residents into displacement. Such actions, it said, constitute crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

The Yemeni authority held the Saudi regime responsible for the crime and described the United States and countries exporting the banned weapons as complicit. It called for urgent action by the United Nations and the UN Special Rapporteur on cluster munitions to visit the Bani Khatab villages and document the remnants of the cluster bombs.

The authority also called on the United Nations to condemn the use of the banned weapons and launch an international criminal investigation into the crime.