Saudi jets bomb northwestern Yemen with banned munitions

Saudi warplanes have pounded Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada with at least two cluster bombs despite a global outcry against the use of such internationally-banned weapons by Saudi Arabia.

According to Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, the airstrikes were carried out against al-Malahit area in Az Zahir district on Monday afternoon, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

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 on many occasions reported and criticized the use of cluster bombs by Riyadh’s military in Yemen.

On March 9, the Amnesty International rights group said in a statement that Saudi Arabia had used cluster bombs on three residential districts and agricultural land in Sa’ada back in mid-February.

Last December, Human Rights Watch also said Saudi Arabia had fired cluster bombs near two schools in Sa’ada, killing two civilians and wounding six others, including a child.

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.

Meanwhile, Yemeni snipers managed to kill at least two Saudi soldiers during a retaliatory attack on a Saudi military base in the kingdom's southern province of Najran. Since March, dozens of Saudi troops and Saudi mercenaries have been killed by Yemeni snipers in Najran and Jizan, another southwestern Saudi province.

In another development on Monday afternoon, terrorists suspected of belonging to the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terror group detonated an explosive-laden car at the gates of a building, used as a temporary headquarters by militia loyal to Yemen’s resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, in the city of Hawtah in Yemen’s southwestern province of Lahij.

SS