US-Saudi slaughter of Yemeni children blot on UN conscience
Aug 14, 2018 11:25 UTC
In a week of deadly airstrikes and mounting civilian deaths, Saudi Arabia, with the full backing of the US, has added the targeting of a school bus and the killing of over 50 Yemeni children to its growing list of crimes against humanity.
The bombing of the school bus, preceded by the cowardly attack on the Saleh Bedouin camp, and a family farm as well as the terrorist airstrike on Hodeidah’s al-Thawra Hospital and the fish market were among the dozens of massive Saudi attacks targeting Yemeni civilians this week.
Now we have special reports in this regard. First we start with a Viewpoint Column that appeared in Iran’s English language daily Kayhan International titled: “US-Saudi slaughter of Yemeni children blot on UN conscience”.
Kayhan International wrote: “It is indeed strange. Thursday’s deliberate bombing of a school bus in Yemen by US warplanes in the service of Saudi Arabia that martyred scores of innocent children is being shamelessly justified by the regime in Riyadh as a “legitimate military operation”, and yet the UN Security Council instead of denouncing the cowardly act of state terrorism is asking the criminal-confessor itself to probe the airstrike and its consequences.
“Imagine a wolf that rapaciously devours the sheep has been given charge of the entire flock!
“Of course, the terrorist-in-chief is the US with its unabated supply of state-of-the-art military technology to the Saudis to continue the carnage in Yemen through airstrikes, and to the UAE through a heavily-armed mercenary force on the ground that is senselessly pounding the poor Yemenis – especially the hapless southerners who made the fatal mistake of willingly putting on their own necks the Emirati yoke.
“The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Saudi airstrike on the school bus, which came on the 73rd anniversary of the dropping on Nagasaki of the “Fat Man” – as the sadistic Americans jokingly called the atomic bomb that killed instantly 50,000 Japanese men, women, and children – was coordinated with the US in view of Donald Trump’s roguish nature and his relish for human blood.
“Yet the World Body, or more properly its Security Council, allows itself to be used by Washington, which prevents the passing of any just resolution against perpetrators of crimes against humanity anywhere in the world, especially against the Saudi-UAE invaders of Yemen and the Zionist usurpers of Palestine.:
Kayhan International noted: “The hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Saada Governorate has confirmed the receiving of 29 bodies of children younger than 15, in addition to 30 other children suffering from various degrees of injuries as a result of the Saudi airstrike on the school bus. Plus, independent media outlets have been repeatedly telecasting the gruesome scenes of the mangled bodies of the dead children and the lamentation of their parents and relatives.
“But instead of outright condemnation of the crime, there is beating around the bush with vague statements of ‘thorough investigation’ – wonder what does it mean when the evidence is crystal clear – because the loss of life of the innocents never matters wherever US hegemony is concerned and US agents are the instruments of death and destruction.
“We saw these double standards in Syria where the government of President Bashar al-Assad was blamed for the chemical weapons regularly used against civilians by the terrorists fully equipped with dangerous toxics supplied by Saudi Arabia, the US, and the illegal Zionist entity.
“Now there is no question that Saudi Arabia or the UAE will carry out a massacre of greater magnitude in Yemen, given the lethargy of the UN Security Council towards last Thursday’s carnage of the children that came a week after the Saudi bombing of al-Thawra Hospital and the nearby fish market in the besieged port city of Hodeidah that killed at least 75 patients, doctors, medical staff, vendors, shoppers, and passers-by, and the wounding of over 150 others.”
Kayhan International pointed out: “In one of the latest videos of the most recent instance of Saudi state terrorism, boys appear to have lost their limbs. In another, children's bodies lie under a blown-up bus. Some boys appear to regain consciousness, their faces bloodied and limbs charred.
“According to the last reports, the death toll from the airstrike is 51, including 40 children, while seventy-nine people were wounded, of whom 56 were children in the age group between 6 and 11 years old.
“Unable to engage in face-to-face combat with the defenders of Yemen’s dignity and independence – the popular Ansarallah Movement which heads the legal government, whose defensive missile strikes has scared the daylights out of the dastardly Saudis – the aggressors continue their cowardly aerial bombardment that has claimed more than 20,000 lives, and displaced millions of people, besides destruction of the infrastructure of Yemen, including mosques, schools, libraries, marketplaces, power generation plants, waterworks, and historical sites on the list of world heritage.
“These crimes against humanity have failed to dent the indomitable spirit of Yemen’s defenders, who are fully confident that sooner or later the aggressors will be defeated, but it is a blot on the UN and human conscience to keep mum, instead of using the international clout to end the senseless war.”
Meanwhile, Ahmed Abdur-Rahman reporting an eyewitness account of the school bus attack by Saudi aircraft in war-stricken Yemen, said: “The late morning sun conspired with a cloudless blue sky to picturesquely frame the city of Dhahian in southern Saada province. Suddenly the serenity was broken by the loud piercing shriek of fighter jets over the quiet village, followed by a deafening explosion. When the thick black smoke finally began to dissipate, more than 20 mothers discovered a school bus carrying their children had been transformed into a hellish scene: choking dust, smoldering shops, and the charred corpses of children buried under the mangled school bus. Anguished moans and screams of grief and pain filled the air.
“At a bed in the Jomhouri Hospital in Saada, four-year-old Mohammad was receiving first aid when he came to the realization that he was still alive but that more than 35 of his classmates, older and younger, lay dead in beds near him as if they were asleep. Others were lying in torn, blood-stained clothing along with school bags, fighting death in the same room.
“Mohammad was one of the 80 civilians wounded on Thursday in fresh U.-Saudi strikes that targeted a school bus carrying children to summer camp on Dhahian’s outskirts in Yemen’s northwestern province of Saada.
In related news, 32-year old Abdul-Ghani Nayeb, the head of the Health Department in Saada who witnessed the attack, told MintPress: “It was 8:30 a.m. when the explosion shattered the day. What did these children do to deserve this? a 32-year-old witness to the strike asked. More than 50 were killed and over 80 others were wounded as a result of the strike. Some were shoppers and passers-by, but most were children.
“The owner of a nearby restaurant, Zaid Hussein Deib, cried out: They were not Iranian experts as alleged. Deib who lost his two sons in the Saudi attack on the school bus, scrambled past overturned plastic white tables and splintered blue tiles, crying: They were children; they were not carrying ballistic missiles.” Deib lost two sons in the attack.
Ahmed Abdul-Kareem, also reporting for Mintpress from Saada Province, said: The death toll is expected to rise, as many victims of the strike remain in critical condition and hospitals struggle to cope with a lack of medical supplies as a result of a Saudi coalition-imposed siege that began in 2015.The US-backed, Saudi-led coalition’s blockade of Yemen has prevented medicine and other critical commodities from reaching around 8.4 million people. Al-Jomhouri hospital, already crowded with a number of wounded from previous airstrikes, has launched an urgent appeal for Yemeni citizens to donate blood.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement that the school bus was indeed carrying children. Johannes Bruwer, head of the delegation for the ICRC in Yemen, said in a tweet that most of the victims were under the age of 10.
The Saudi-led coalition issued a statement released by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) claiming the fatal airstrikes were aimed at missile launchers used by Yemeni forces to target the Jizan industrial city in southern Saudi Arabia, adding: “The strikes conformed to international and humanitarian laws.”
Mohammad Abdus-Salaam, official spokesman for Ansarallah, described these claims as “the summit of absurdity and moral failure.”
A funeral procession was also targeted by coalition airstrikes Thursday. Five civilians were killed when three airstrikes hit the procession in Fala, in the Majz district of southern Saada. Saudi fighter jets also struck the Zabid District in Yemen’s western province of Hodeida, killing two civilians and injuring a child.
Earlier, at least 18 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and dozens wounded, when Saudi airstrikes bombed two civilian targets in the village of al Amasiha in Amran, northwestern Yemen, as the Saudi-led coalition pressed ahead with its bombing campaign, which often targets civilians in the country.
First, Saudi airstrikes targeted camps belonging to the Saleh Bedouin tribe, killing members of seven different families. The nomadic tribe reached the area three months ago in search of livestock pasture and water. Saudi warplanes returned to the camp at sunset at targeted rescuers who were still struggling to retrieve bodies from the rubble. Five rescuers were killed in the second round of strikes.
“So far we’ve recovered three children, as well as two women,” a local resident assisting in the rescue efforts said. That rescuer would later be killed in the second round of the double-tap airstrikes.
Saudi fighter jets also conducted airstrikes on a farm in the al-Jar area, in the Abs District in northwestern Yemen, killing six civilians. The victims were all members of the same family; four women and an infant girl were among the deceased.
The bombing of the school bus, the Saleh Bedouin camp, as well as a family farm were among the dozens of massive attacks targeting civilians this week. Last Thursday, the coalition bombed a fish market in Hodeida, western Yemen, killing dozens of fishermen and wounding others who were later transferred to al-Thawrah hospital, which would be targeted by coalition bombs a short time later. So far, 60 people are believed to have been killed in the two attacks and 130 were wounded, including three women and children.
Although the coalition has not commented on the bombing yet, it is expected to evade responsibility for the attack, likely by accusing the Ansarallah of being behind the attacks without providing any evidence to back its claims.
In fact, the US-backed, Saudi-led coalition has disavowed attacks in Yemen many times before. The coalition initially denied its role in the attack on a funeral at a community hall in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a on October 8, 2016 that killed over 140 civilians. It later admitted targeting the funeral, claiming that an unnamed party had provided false intelligence.
The coalition has launched over 230,000 airstrikes — according a new statistics from the Legal Center for Rights and development, an organization that tracks Saudi-coalition violations of international law — killing civilians and targeting hospitals, schools, markets, and camps for the internally displaced. Yemen’s military has responded by firing salvos of missiles at military and economic targets inside Saudi Arabia, including on the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Over 600,000 civilians have been killed or injured in Yemen since the Saudi-coalition began its attacks in 2015, according to Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights based in Sana’a. The US-backed Saudi-led coalition’s blockade on Yemen has also triggered an epidemic of disease and famine across the country.
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