War on Yemen: Children lives don’t matter to Saudis

The so-called Saudi-led coalition added to its war crimes in Yemen by carrying out an airstrike against a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, MSF, claiming the lives of at least 11 people and wounding at least 19 others.

As MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the medical facility to all sides in the conflict, the targeting was deliberate. With US backing and assistance, Saudi Arabia and its certain allies have waged an illegal air war inside Yemen since March 2015, following the seizure of Sana’a, the capital, by Ansarullah movement and the revolutionary forces. The Saudi regime apparently is seeking to reinstate the fugitive and unpopular government-in-exile of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The recent airstrike on the Abs hospital in the northern Hajjah Province is part of a deliberate campaign to terrorize the population in the north of Yemen. The Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of more than 6,500 civilians and destroyed much of the country’s social infrastructure, including some 250 medical centers, 800 schools and hundreds of electricity plants and fuel store houses. Peter Symonds, a political analyst and writer, and a regular contributor to the Globalresearch.org online, has more on the Saudi crimes against humanity, the recent one on a hospital in Yemen.

Hospital director Ibrahim Aram told the New York Times by phone that three Yemini MSF staff members—a guard, a logistician and an electrician—were killed in the attack. Another guard, an X-ray technician and a nurse had limbs amputated as a result of their injuries. Three foreign doctors suffered relatively minor injuries. Ayman Ahmed Mathkoor, health director for Hajjah Province, reported that the airstrike destroyed the hospital’s emergency department. He put the death toll at 15 martyred and 20 wounded. Health ministry official Ibrahim Jafari, who visited the site, told the New York Times that the emergency area had been full of patients at the time and that many of the victims were badly burned. He said there were no military forces near the hospital.

Teresa Sancristoval, MSF emergency program manager for Yemen, said it was the fourth attack on an MSF-supported medical facility in Yemen during the past year. Other airstrikes hit Shiara Hospital in Razeh in northern Saada Province on January 10, claiming the lives of six people; Taiz Hospital in the city of Taiz on December 2; and Haydan Hospital in Saada Province on October 26. Sancristoval said in a news release “Once again, we witness the tragic consequences of the bombing of a hospital. Once again, a fully functional hospital full of patients and MSF national and international staff members was bombed in a war that has shown no respect for medical facilities or patients”.

Other aid agencies condemned the attack. Oxfam country director in Yemen, Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, said “This was a horrific attack, killing sick and injured people and the medical staff desperately trying to help them. The world cannot turn a blind eye as the most vulnerable suffer in his conflict”. The Saudi-led coalition told Associated Press its Joint Incidents Assessment Team was “aware of reports of an airstrike on a hospital in Yemen’s northern Hajjah Province” and had opened an investigation. The outcome will undoubtedly be another whitewash. A Saudi report, issued this month, claimed baselessly that the MSF hospital hit in October had been used by the revolutionaries for military purposes. Just in the recent one, according to local officials and aid workers, an airstrike on a school in Saada killed at least 10 children and wounded another 28. MSF staff treated the victims, who were aged between 6 and 15. The Saudi military said the attack hit a militia training camp, but provided no evidence to support its allegation.

US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau issued a low-key expression of concern over the recent airstrike. She said “Strikes on humanitarian facilities, including hospitals, are particularly concerning.” She added that “We call on all parties to cease hostilities immediately. Continued military actions only prolong the suffering of the Yemeni people.” These remarks are utterly hypocritical.

The US has backed the Saudi war to the hilt, deploying US military advisers and intelligence officers to coordinate with their Saudi counterparts and assisting airstrikes by providing targeting data and aerial refueling. In May, the Pentagon announced the deployment of small Special Forces teams inside Yemen to support Saudi operations. The US has waged its own protracted and illegal drone war inside Yemen, nominally against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Just recently, the US State Department approved the sale of 150 Abrams battle tanks to Saudi Arabia—part of a package of American weaponry worth $1.15 billion. The package includes a range of additional military hardware, including Galting guns, as well as extensive training for the Saudi military. US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, one of its key Middle Eastern allies, are worth an estimated $20 billion annually. The State Department’s muted comments about the attack on a hospital are in marked contrast to the propaganda campaign by the US and international media over alleged and unfounded "atrocities" by Russian and Syrian war planes against US-backed terrorists inside Syria.

The US military is responsible for the criminal attack on an MSF hospital at Kunduz in northern Afghanistan last October that killed 42 civilians. An AC-130 gunship unleashed its devastating firepower on the medical facility for more than an hour. Some victims were burned alive in their beds while others were mown down as they tried to flee. The Pentagon’s final report, released in April, was a brazen cover-up which denied that a war crime was committed. None of the personnel involved faced criminal charges or a court martial.

The airstrike on a Yemeni hospital is further evidence of an intensification of the Saudi-led war inside Yemen following the breakdown of UN-sponsored talks between the revolutionaries and the government-in-exile led by fugitive and Saudi puppet President Hadi. Backed by Washington and armed to the teeth with US weapons, the Saudi regime is determined to subordinate the country to its interests.

The rising death toll of children in Saudi-led war on Yemen is generating strong messages of condemnation from international institutions and human rights organizations – with the United Nations remaining helpless as killings keep multiplying. The House of Saud and its partners in crime, which have launched thousands of deadly airstrikes against Yemen since March 2015, deny targeting the school in question! They claim the site bombed was "a major training camp for militia." This is rubbish. With the intensification in violence, the number of children killed and injured by Saudi airstrikes has grown sharply almost by the hour. Across the country, nearly 10 million children – 80 percent of the country’s under-18 population – are still in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. More than 1.3 million people have also been forced to flee their homes.

The 1949 Geneva Convention, which governs the basic rules of war, has also continued to be violated by the greatest offenders in the conflict.  Even UNICEF agrees. In a new report on children in conflict zones the organization says one of the worst cases is Yemen where an average of eight children are being killed or maimed almost every day.

Under the circumstances, what is not in dispute is that as per the UN Charter there is a moral imperative and a legal obligation on the part of Saudi Arabia and cohorts to protect children. They should never jeopardize, much less murder, children for national interests and regional politics. Also under International Law, the airstrikes amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, as the offensive has no international legitimacy. That said, the conflict in Yemen is still a particular tragedy for children. Children are being killed by Saudi bombs and those that survive face the growing threat of disease and malnutrition. As devastating as the conflict is for the lives of children right now, it will have terrifying consequences for their future as well.

This cannot be allowed to continue. This is an important issue and it should receive great attention by the media as well. Together with the international civil society, they should force the warmongers to stop bombing schools and come to terms with accountability for the devastating loss of children lives at their hands. Equally, they should call on the UN to abandon its politics of shame and review the Saudi war crimes and act on it, which has received international attention and condemnation in recent days.

It’s tragic to hear that since March 2015 there has never been any UN resolution against Saudi Arabia, and certainly no international prosecution of one of thousands of children and civilian murders at the hands of Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The worst offenders in the Middle East have a lot of explaining to do in such tribunals. So far, they have refused to come clean, which only implies one thing: They have no intention to stop murdering children, much less come to terms with accountability.

EA/ME