Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have admitted that the bombing of a school bus in Yemen last month - which killed 51 people, including 40 children - was "unjustified".

A probe by the coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels concluded on Saturday that "mistakes" had been made in the August 9 air raid in Saada province.

At the day of the attack, coalition spokesperson Colonel Turki al-Malki had defended the air raid, saying his forces hit a "legitimate military target", which included "operators and planners".

But in a rare concession, the military alliance's investigative body, the Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT), said that those behind it should be held accountable.

"The Joint Team … is of the opinion that the coalition forces should initiate legal action to try and penalise those responsible for the mistakes, which caused collateral damage in the area," Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour, a legal adviser to JIAT, told reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from neighbouring Djibouti, said the statement marked a "remarkable about-turn" after the coalition's initial assertions that this was a legitimate military operation.

"But if you look at the actual wording ... they are not saying that there was a problem with killing children.

"What they are saying is that this attack shouldn't have taken place when it did because they were targeting Houthi leaders, and they say … their intelligence pointed in that direction but those Houthi leaders at that stage did not present a threat to Saudi-led coalition forces and therefore that operation shouldn't have happened," added Fisher.

"They say that intelligence was passed to the pilot who fired the fatal missile but it never got there in time."

Universal condemnation

The probe came after the air attack sparked widespread international condemnation and calls for an independent investigation from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF's regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, tweeted at the time: "NO EXCUSES ANYMORE!!"

"Does the world really need more innocent children's lives to stop the cruel war on children in Yemen?" he said.

Following the attack, individual members of the Congress in the United States also called on their country's army to clarify its role in the war and investigate whether support for the air raids could render US military personnel "liable under the war crimes act".

The US has been the biggest supplier of military equipment to Riyadh, with more than $90bn of sales recorded between 2010 and 2015.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Yemen's capital, Sanaa on Saturday, Hussain al-Bukhaiti, a pro-Houthi activist, said the coalition's statement was "not an apology".

"It is actually adding insult to injury," he said. "Since the beginning of this war, they have committed many crimes and they only regret or release such a statement only if that crime has been covered widely on the media."

Sama'a al-Hamdani, a visiting fellow at Georgetown University, said "the Saudis had to agree to hold themselves accountable to international standards of law" due to major outside pressure.

"You could make two things from their statement," she told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC. "One, they could potentially change their ways, which is the first step to issuing reparations to the families of those killed. It is also a way to hold them accountable for their actions."

Critical reports

The Saudi-UAE admission on Saturday came a week after Human Rights Watch accused the pair of reaching "dubious conclusions" in its post-air attack analysis and failing to properly investigate alleged war crimes.

In a damning 90-page report, the rights group slammed JIAT for "absolving coalition members of legal responsibility in the vast majority of attacks".

Separately, the UN said this week that all sides in Yemen's bloody conflict may have committed war crimes involving deadly air raids, rampant sexual violence, and the recruitment of child soldiers

Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, has been bombing Yemen since March 2015 after the Houthis swept across the country, including Sanaa. The coalition's stated aim is to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.

Out of the 16,000-plus raids they have launched since the start of the conflict, only a handful have been investigated, despite nearly a third of all bombs hitting civilian targets.

Last year, the UN blacklisted the Saudi-UAE alliance for causing the majority of reported child deaths and injuries in Yemen.

The global body has described the situation in Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

It has also said that least 10,000 people have been killed since the start of the conflict. However, analysts say the death toll is likely to be higher.</s>Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have admitted that the bombing of a school bus in Yemen last month - which killed 51 people, including 40 children - was "unjustified".

A probe by the coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels concluded on Saturday that "mistakes" had been made in the August 9 air raid in Saada province.

At the day of the attack, coalition spokesperson Colonel Turki al-Malki had defended the air raid, saying his forces hit a "legitimate military target", which included "operators and planners".

But in a rare concession, the military alliance's investigative body, the Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT), said that those behind it should be held accountable.

"The Joint Team … is of the opinion that the coalition forces should initiate legal action to try and penalize those responsible for the mistakes, which caused collateral damage in the area," Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour, a legal adviser to JIAT, told reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from neighbouring Djibouti, said the statement marked a "remarkable about-turn" after the coalition's initial assertions that this was a legitimate military operation.

"But if you look at the actual wording ... they are not saying that there was a problem with killing children.

"What they are saying is that this attack shouldn't have taken place when it did because they were targeting Houthi leaders, and they say … their intelligence pointed in that direction but those Houthi leaders at that stage did not present a threat to Saudi-led coalition forces and therefore that operation shouldn't have happened," added Fisher.

"They say that intelligence was passed to the pilot who fired the fatal missile but it never got there in time."

The probe came after the air attack sparked widespread international condemnation and calls for an independent investigation from the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF's regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, tweeted at the time: "NO EXCUSES ANYMORE!!"

"Does the world really need more innocent children's lives to stop the cruel war on children in Yemen?" he said.

Following the attack, individual members of the Congress in the United States also called on their country's army to clarify its role in the war and investigate whether support for the air raids could render US military personnel "liable under the war crimes act".

The US has been the biggest supplier of military equipment to Riyadh, with more than $90bn of sales recorded between 2010 and 2015.

The Saudi-UAE admission on Saturday came a week after Human Rights Watch accused the pair of reaching "dubious conclusions" in its post-air attack analysis and failing to properly investigate alleged war crimes.

In a damning 90-page report, the rights group slammed JIAT for "absolving coalition members of legal responsibility in the vast majority of attacks".

Separately, the UN said this week that all sides in Yemen's bloody conflict may have committed war crimes involving deadly air strikes, rampant sexual violence, and the recruitment of child soldiers

Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, has been bombing Yemen since March 2015 after the Houthis swept across the country, including the capital, Sanaa. The coalition's stated aim is to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.

Out of the 16,000-plus raids they have launched since the start of the conflict, only a handful have been investigated, despite nearly a third of all bombs hitting civilian targets.

Last year, the UN blacklisted the Saudi-UAE alliance for causing the majority of reported child deaths and injuries in Yemen.</s>A coalition of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said on Saturday that the aerial attack on a school bus in Yemen last month was “unjustified” and expressed its regret, reported Reuters. An air raid on August 9 at a market in Saada province killed 51 people, including 40 children in a bus.

The alliance, backed by the United States, is battling with Houthi rebels aligned with Iran. The Joint Incident Assessment Team said that the air raids were carried out after intelligence inputs indicated the presence of Houthi leaders in the bus.

“There was a clear delay in preparing the fighter jet at the appropriate time and place, thus losing [the opportunity] to target this bus as a military target in an open area in order to avoid such collateral damage,” said legal advisor of the Joint Incident Assessment Team, Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour. The Joint Incident Assessment Team is an investigative body set up by the coalition.

“The team believes that the coalition forces should immediately review the application of their rules of engagement to ensure compliance,” al-Mansour said. Later, the coalition accepted the JIAT findings and said it would take legal action against those who contributed to the mistake. “The Joint Forces Command of the Coalition expresses regret over the mistakes, extends its sympathies, condolences and solidarity to the families of the victims,” it said in a statement.

The Joint Forces Command will revise its rules of engagement to ensure that such incidents do not happen again, it added. It will also coordinate with the Yemen government to compensate victims.

Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said that the US Department of Defense welcomed the announcement of the findings, saying the country appreciated the coalition’s decision to take legal measures to ensure accountability and make the necessary improvements to prevent another tragedy.

But Hussain al-Bukhaiti, a pro-Houthi activist, said the statement was “not an apology” and “added insult to injury”. “Since the beginning of this war, they have committed many crimes and they only regret or release such a statement only if that crime has been covered widely on the media,” Al Jazeera quoted him as saying.

Human Rights Watch on Sunday called the attack “an apparent war crime” and called on all countries to immediately halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. It also sought an independent inquiry by the United Nations into the violations.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s attack on a bus full of young boys adds to its already gruesome track record of killing civilians at weddings, funerals, hospitals, and schools in Yemen,” said Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Countries with knowledge of this record that are supplying more bombs to the Saudis will be complicit in future deadly attacks on civilians.”</s>An air attack by the Saudi-led coalition that killed dozens of people, including children travelling on a bus, in Yemen last month lacked military justification, an investigative body set up by the coalition said on Saturday.

RIYADH: A Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Saturday it accepted that an air attack last month that killed dozens of people, including children travelling on a bus, was unjustified and pledged to hold accountable anyone who contributed to the error.

The rare concession follows mounting international pressure, including from allies, to do more to limit civilian casualties in a 3-1/2 year civil war that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed the already impoverished country to the brink of famine.

The Western-backed alliance fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said at the time that the Aug. 9 air strikes at a market in Saada province had targeted missile launchers used to attack southern Saudi Arabia a day earlier and accused the Houthis of using children as human shields.

The Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT), an investigative body set up by the coalition, said on Saturday that the strikes had been based on intelligence indicating the bus was carrying Houthi leaders, a legitimate military target, but delays in executing the strike and receiving a no-strike order should be further investigated.

"There was a clear delay in preparing the fighter jet at the appropriate time and place, thus losing (the opportunity) to target this bus as a military target in an open area in order to avoid such collateral damage," JIAT legal advisor Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour told reporters in the Saudi capital.

"The team believes that the coalition forces should immediately review the application of their rules of engagement to ensure compliance..." he added.

The coalition later announced that it accepted those findings and pledged to hold accountable anyone who was proven to have made a mistake.

"The Joint Forces Command of the Coalition expresses regret over the mistakes, extends its sympathies, condolences and solidarity to the families of the victims," said a statement carried by the Saudi state news agency SPA.

The coalition said it would coordinate with the Yemeni government to compensate victims and would continue reviewing the rules of engagement to prevent the repeat of such incidents.

Last week, a U.N. panel of human rights experts said that some coalition air strikes may constitute war crimes. In Washington, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition was not unconditional, but suggested the United States would continue to support the alliance as it works to reduce fallout on civilians.

The war has so far garnered relatively little public attention in Western countries, but there are signs that is starting to change, particularly because of the role Western governments play in supplying arms to the coalition countries.

Saudi Arabia is leading an alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab states trying to restore the internationally recognised government of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, ousted from the capital, Sanaa, by the Houthis in 2015.

The Houthis, who control the capital and most of the west of the country, regularly fire missiles on southern Saudi Arabia and occasionally aim for higher-value targets, such as the capital Riyadh or facilities of state oil company Aramco.

The United Nations has convened talks in Geneva on Sept 6, the first effort to negotiate the war in more than two years.</s>A Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Saturday it accepted that an air attack last month that killed dozens of people, including children travelling on a bus, was unjustified and pledged to hold accountable anyone who contributed to the error.

The rare concession follows mounting international pressure, including from allies, to do more to limit civilian casualties in a 3-1/2 year civil war that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed the already impoverished country to the brink of famine.

The Western-backed alliance fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said at the time that the August 9 air strikes at a market in Saada province had targeted missile launchers used to attack southern Saudi Arabia a day earlier and accused the Houthis of using children as human shields.

The Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT), an investigative body set up by the coalition, said on Saturday that the strikes had been based on intelligence indicating the bus was carrying Houthi leaders, a legitimate military target, but delays in executing the strike and receiving a no-strike order should be further investigated.

"There was a clear delay in preparing the fighter jet at the appropriate time and place, thus losing (the opportunity) to target this bus as a military target in an open area in order to avoid such collateral damage," JIAT legal advisor Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour told reporters in the Saudi capital.</s>If the US were to follow the rules of warfare written into US military law and treaties to which the US is a party, the US must immediately end its support for the Saudi Arabia-led war in Yemen. We should also marshal all of its diplomatic tools to end the conflict. Since 2015, Saudi Arabia, and allies such as the United Arab Emirates, have been waging a devastating war in support of the former government of Yemen against the current Houthi regime. Amnesty International has called the conflict a "forgotten war" because its deadly consequences have failed to rise to the level of international crisis in media or government agendas. However, under former President Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, the US has been complicit in war crimes and the creation of a completely preventable humanitarian nightmare for the people of Yemen.

On August 28, 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report detailing the brutal conduct of the war. As of June 2018, at least 6,475 civilians had been killed and more than 10,000 injured in the conflict. The report notes the "real figure is likely to be significantly higher." While evidence "strongly suggests" that all parties to the conflict have violated international law, the report is clear that Saudi-led coalition airstrikes are responsible for the largest numbers of civilian deaths and injuries. Moreover, there is significant evidence that the Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly bombed civilian neighborhoods, medical facilities, markets, weddings, funerals, and even a school bus full of children. Intentionally attacking civilians is a war crime.

The United States has provided targeting support, intelligence, and midair refueling to Saudi fighter jets, enabling its continued bombardment. The US has also sold billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry to Saudi Arabia, including cluster bombs, a weapon banned by UN treaty and outlawed by the majority of countries in the world. America’s actions have been lethal for Yemeni civilians. In the most recent example, news outlets reported in August 2018 that US-manufactured bombs killed 40 children, and others, in a single Saudi strike on a school bus. No matter how it is portrayed in media or by government representatives, aerial warfare is not clean and it is not precise.

On the ground, the situation is dire. The UN reports that arbitrary detention and torture in prisons controlled by UAE-affiliated forces is widespread, and government security forces have made a "common practice" of abduction and rape of women in order to extort money from victims’ families. In the careful language of human rights reporting, the UN states that there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the government of Yemen have committed war crimes including rape and torture. Saudi Arabia and its allies have also blockaded Yemen by air and sea, preventing food and lifesaving medical supplies from entering the country. As a result, 8.4 million Yemenis were on the brink of famine as of April 2018. The collapse of healthcare infrastructure caused by the blockade has led to the largest series of cholera epidemics in modern history, as many as a million people.

The conditions in Yemen are unbearable and entirely man-made. Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the United States, are causing massive suffering for millions of civilians. In March, US Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced a bill that would have ended US support for the war. The bill was defeated 55-44 with 10 Democrats joining the Republican majority. Before the vote, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that withdrawing US support would increase the risk to civilians. This argument strains credulity given that it is Saudi Arabia and its allies that are causing the majority of casualties. Furthermore, if McConnell were concerned about civilian safety, he would push congress and the Trump Administration to bring conflicting parties to a negotiating table.

Pursuing peaceful negotiations to end the conflict is an important diplomatic effort the United States should take immediately. It must also end its support for states and groups committing war crimes. The preponderance of evidence suggests Saudi Arabia is regularly violating the laws of war, and the US is complicit as long as it continues to enable Saudi actions. It must stop refueling Saudi jets and providing targeting intelligence. Crucially, the United States should initiate, and pressure other governments to support, an arms embargo on warring parties. At minimum, it must immediately suspend all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. Finally, if US leaders claim to care about civilians in Yemen, they should drastically increase humanitarian aid for Yemenis whose suffering they have caused and the United States must reopen its refugee resettlement program to displaced Yemenis.

From 2015 to late 2016, the Obama Administration did not push for this moderate set of diplomatic initiatives and Trump is even less likely to take these actions. It is therefore incumbent upon Americans to call and write to their elected representatives to pressure them to end our support for the decimation of Yemen. If Americans care about human rights and international law, the bare minimum we can do is stop abetting war crimes against the people of Yemen.

Jared Keyel, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs, researching refugee resettlement in the United States.</s>SANAA, Yemen — Yemen’s Shiite rebels say they have targeted a Saudi ship off the kingdom’s southern province of Jizan.

The rebel-run Al-Masirah TV channel reported on Saturday that the attack on the Saudi “battleship” was in response to an earlier airstrike that killed at least five fishermen off Yemen’s coast, blamed on the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-aligned rebels, known as Houthis. The report did not provide details on casualties.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia.

Yemen’s civil war has been raging for more than three years. The coalition backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government and aims to restore it to power.

Rebel attacks on Saudi ships prompted Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, Aramco, to temporarily suspend oil shipments in late July. It resumed them after taking security measures.</s>Sept. 1 (UPI) -- A Saudi-led coalition investigative team said Saturday a coalition airstrike that hit a school bus in Yemen killing dozens of children last month was not justified.

The Aug. 9 Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Dhahyan market in the northern province of Saada, Yemen, killed at least 50 people, mostly children, and injured 77, the ministry said, CNN reported.

Mansour al-Mansour, official spokesman of the Arab Coalition's Joint Incident Assessment Team, said at press conference Saturday that video from the plane that conducted the strike was analyzed for the report.

Saudi Arabia's official news agency initially reported that the strike was a legitimate military action in retaliation to a Houthi ballistic missile attack and Mansour maintained Saturday it was still a legitimate military target because it had Houthi leaders and led to the killing of a number of Houthi leaders. However, he also admitted that "the raid on Dhahyan does not comply with the coalition's rules of engagement," because the bombing was not justified at the time, since the target was not a threat to the coalition forces.

Mansour also called on the coalition to hold those responsible for mistakes in Dhahyan raid responsible.

In response, the Saudi and United Arab Emirates coalition agreed Saturday with the report and pledged to "hold the ones who committed mistakes accountable."

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the airstrike and offered condolences for the families of the victims. He called on all parties involved in the Yemen civil war to respect international humanitarian law and called for an independent investigation.

Following the bus attack, some Congress members called on the U.S. military to clarify its role in the war and investigate whether support for the air raid could render American military personnel "liable under the war crimes act."

The Saudi coalition, which has had U.S., French and British logistical and intelligence support, has carried out strikes in Yemen to reinstate the internationally recognized presidency of Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whom rebels drove into exile three years ago.

The United Nations' human rights agency said in a report Tuesday that parties to the civil war in Yemen may have committed war crimes over the three years. At least 6,660 civilians have been killed and more than 10,500 injured in the conflict, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Yemen, also reeling from a multi-year cholera epidemic that's killed more than 2,300, has the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world, humanitarian agency Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere said.

"Since [2015], 22.2 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, among which 11.3 million are in acute need of immediate assistance to save or sustain life, mostly women and children," the group said.

In June alone, the coalition carried out 258 air raids on Yemen, nearly one-third of which targeted non-military sites.</s>RIYADH: An air attack by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen last month that killed dozens of people, including children travelling on a bus, lacked military justification and requires a review of the rules of engagement, a coalition body said on Saturday.

The rare concession by the Joint Incident Assessment Team, an investigative entity set up by the coalition, follows mounting international pressure, including from allies, to do more to limit civilian casualties in the 3-1/2 year civil war.

The Western-backed alliance fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said at the time that the air strikes had targeted missile launchers used to attack the southern Saudi city of Jizan a day earlier and accused the Houthis of using children as human shields. JIAT legal adviser Mansour Ahmed al-Mansour on Saturday said the strikes had been based on intelligence indicating that the bus was carrying Houthi leaders, a legitimate military target, but that delays in executing the strike and receiving a no-strike order should be investigated.

“There was a clear delay in preparing the fighter jet at the appropriate time and place, thus losing (the opportunity) to target this bus as a military target in an open area in order to avoid such collateral damage,” Mansour told reporters in the Saudi capital. “The team believes that the coalition forces should immediately review the application of their rules of engagement to ensure compliance. Last week, a UN panel of human rights experts said that some coalition air strikes may constitute war crimes, while US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said US support for the Saudi-led coalition was not unconditional, but suggested the United States would continue to support the alliance as it works to reduce fallout on civilians.

Saudi-led coalition pledges accountability: The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said on Saturday it accepted that an air attack it launched last month which killed dozens of people was unjustified and pledged to hold accountable those who had made mistakes. The leadership of the Western-backed alliance said in a statement that it would continue to review its rules of engagement in order to prevent a recurrence of such events.

Houthis target a Saudi warship: The Iran-aligned armed Houthi movement targeted a Saudi Arabian warship off the coast of Saudi Arabia´s province of Jizan, the group´s Al Masirah TV said on Saturday on its Twitter feed. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, or comment from the Saudi-led coalition that is battling the Houthis in Yemen´s civil war.</s>(Beirut) – A Saudi-led coalition airstrike that killed at least 26 children and wounded at least 19 more in or near a school bus in the busy market of Dhahyan, in northern Yemen, on August 9, 2018, is an apparent war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. Countries should immediately halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening a United Nations independent inquiry into violations by all parties to Yemen’s armed conflict.

Since the Yemen conflict escalated in March 2015, numerous coalition airstrikes have been carried out in violation of the laws of war without adequate follow-up investigations, placing arms suppliers at risk of complicity in war crimes. Human Rights Watch has identified United States-origin munitions at the sites of at least 24 other unlawful coalition attacks in Yemen. The US is reportedly working to advance a sale of $7 billion in precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s attack on a bus full of young boys adds to its already gruesome track record of killing civilians at weddings, funerals, hospitals, and schools in Yemen,” said Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Countries with knowledge of this record that are supplying more bombs to the Saudis will be complicit in future deadly attacks on civilians.”

Human Rights Watch spoke by phone to 14 witnesses, including 9 children, who said that shortly before 8:30 a.m. on August 9, an aerial bomb hit the market in Dhahyan, a town 20 kilometers north of Saada in Houthi-controlled northwestern Yemen, 60 kilometers from the Saudi border. The bomb landed within a few meters of a bus filled with boys on an excursion organized by a local mosque to visit the graves of men who had been killed in fighting. The bus was parked outside a grocery store where the driver had gone to buy water for the children.

The witnesses identified 34 people, including 26 children and 4 teachers, all of whom they identified as civilians, who were killed in the attack, and said there was no evident military target in the market at the time. The attack killed 25 boys and wounded 13 boys on the bus, according to the witnesses, and also killed a boy and wounded six others who were near the bus. Some grieving parents said that the force of the explosion meant they were unable to recover any body parts of their children.

A 16-year-old boy working in a barbershop across the street from the bus told Human Rights Watch by phone from his hospital bed that the explosion was “like the flickering of a lamp, followed by dust and darkness.” He was wounded in the attack by metal fragments in his lower back and said he cannot move unassisted or walk to the bathroom.

A 13-year-old boy who was on the bus, who was also hospitalized, said he had a painful leg wound and hoped his leg would not be amputated. Many of his friends were killed. “Even if I am able to run and play in the future,” he said, “I will not find anyone to play with.”

Human Rights Watch received photographs and videos of munition remnants that a lawyer based in Sanaa, about 235 kilometers south of Saada, said were at the site. He had traveled to the site of the attack on August 11. He also took videos at the site showing the collected remnants near the destroyed bus in the market. The photos and videos of markings visible on a guidance fin for a GBU-12 Paveway II bomb show it was produced at a General Dynamics Corporation facility in Garland, Texas, as well as other markings identifying Lockheed Martin.

Human Rights Watch could not confirm the remnants were found near the site of the attack. However, the relative homogeneity of the fragments in thickness as well as condition, with no weathering or discoloration apparent, and the images of damage from the attack, are consistent with the detonation of a large impact-fuzed aerial bomb. Human Rights Watch has previously determined GBU-12 Paveway II munitions were used in coalition airstrikes that killed 31 civilians on September 10, 2016, and killed more than 100 civilians at a funeral ceremony on October 8, 2016.

The Saudi-led coalition, as it has in past attacks that killed civilians, has made various claims about the intended target of the attack. Coalition spokesperson, Col. Turki al-Malki, stated on August 9 that “the targeting today in Sa’dah Governorate” was a “lawful” attack on “the militants responsible” for a ballistic missile attack on Jazan, a city in southern Saudi Arabia, on the night of August 8. The ballistic missile was launched from Amran, a different Yemeni governorate, not Saada, according to the coalition. Al-Malki told Al-Arabiya television the attack targeted “insurgents on the bus.” He told CNN, “No, this is not children in the bus.… We do have high standard measures for targeting.”

On August 11, the Saudi Arabia Permanent Mission to the UN stated the attack “targeted Houthi leaders who were responsible for recruiting and training young children.... The military action also targeted one of the most prominent trainers of weapons.” No evidence was put forward to support these claims.

Under the laws of war, parties must do everything feasible to verify that targets are valid military objectives. Witnesses said there were no armed men in the market or on the bus, and videos taken on the bus before the attack do not show any fighters or weapons. Human Rights Watch could not confirm the absence of a Houthi military target in the vicinity of the attack, but even if it were present, the use of a weapon with wide area effects in a crowded market would have been unlawfully indiscriminate or expected to cause disproportionate civilian loss.

Individuals who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent – that is, intentionally or recklessly – may be prosecuted for war crimes. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for assisting in, facilitating, aiding, or abetting a war crime. All governments that are parties to an armed conflict are obligated to investigate alleged war crimes by members of their armed forces.

Despite initially discounting the possibility of an unlawful attack, the coalition later said it would investigate the strike. Coalition investigations seldom find wrongdoing. Human Rights Watch found that the coalition’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) has failed to carry out credible investigations since its establishment in 2016. Victims of strikes in which JIAT recommended the coalition provide some form of assistance also said they had yet to receive any form of redress.

Shortly after the August 9 attack, the US State Department spokesperson said that the Saudi-led coalition should “conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the incident.”

The Defense Department spokesperson said the US military was not involved in the Dhahyan airstrike, but endorsed US military efforts to reduce civilian casualties: “US military support to our partners mitigates noncombatant casualties, by improving coalition processes and procedures, especially regarding compliance with the law of armed conflict and best practices for reducing the risk of civilian casualties.”

A spokesperson for Lockheed Martin referred questions about the Dhahyan attack to the Defense Department. The Defense Department declined journalists’ requests to identify the source of the weapon used in the attack. The military later stated a lieutenant general’s already-scheduled visit to Saudi Arabia discussed “the need for a timely and transparent investigation” of the attack with Saudi authorities.

In November 2015, the US State Department approved the sale of 4,020 GBU-12 Paveway II bombs as part of a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, but the US halted parts of the sale involving precision-guided munitions in December 2016. The Trump administration reversed that decision in March 2017. In June 2017, the US approved another arms agreement based on Saudi pledges to reduce civilian casualties.

The United Kingdom and France also remain major arms sellers to Saudi Arabia. Germany has suspended arms sales to the warring parties in Yemen, and the Netherlands and Sweden have adopted more restrictive approaches to arms sales. A Belgian court suspended four arms licenses to Saudi Arabia over concerns about violations in Yemen. Norway has also suspended its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and to the United Arab Emirates, which plays a significant role in military operations in Yemen.

“Any US official who thinks the way to prevent Saudi Arabia from killing more Yemeni children is to sell it more bombs should watch the videos of the bus attack in Dhahyan,” Van Esveld said. “The US and others should immediately stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening the independent UN inquiry into violations in Yemen or risk being complicit in future atrocities.”

Human Rights Watch documented the full names, ages, and status of 34 people killed in the attack, including 3 teachers and 25 children who were on the bus, and a child, a teacher, and 4 other men in the market. In addition, witnesses identified 4 other adults who were killed, and 13 children on the bus and 6 children in the market who were wounded. The bus driver, who was in a store in the market, was not harmed.

The Houthi-run Education Ministry published a list of the names, ages, and other identifying information of the children and teachers killed, and of 51 people wounded in the strike (not counting repeated names), including 49 children. According to the Houthi Health Ministry, in total, 51 people were killed and 79 wounded.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated that 50 people were killed and 77 wounded, and that on August 9, Saada’s al-Talh hospital, which the ICRC supports, received the bodies of 29 children under age 15, and 48 people who were wounded, including 30 children.

Children who were on the bus said they were part of a summer program, which began in June, to study at the Grand Mosque from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. daily, except Thursdays and Fridays. On August 9, they had gathered at the mosque at 7 a.m. for a special excursion to the Houthi “martyrs’ cemetery” and the Imam al-Hadi mosque. Nearly all the children on the trip were under age 14. The mosque had organized the same excursion for older students two weeks earlier. “The market was busy and the bus was full of boys,” said Ahmed Muhammad Ali Swayed, 16, who was in the market near the bus at the time of the attack.

Ahmad Abdul Rahman Mohsen Adlan, 13, told Human Rights Watch by phone that the attack had badly wounded his legs. Beginning in June, Adlan had taught summer classes on literacy and memorizing the Quran to 60 children ages 10 and under at the mosque. Five of his students were killed in the attack, he said:

We went to visit one of the cemeteries first, then we stopped at the grocery store near the post office to buy water because we were thirsty. I didn't hear anything, no explosion, and suddenly I was standing near a hole next to the bus. It was like a dream, as if the whole trip was a dream, or what is going on now is a dream. I didn't know what happened, but I was about to fall into the hole, and I turned and saw that beside me there were a lot of pieces of people, chopped-up people.

Three brothers who were on the bus – Ahmad, 14, Hassan, 13, and Yahia Hanash, 11 – said that the bus stopped so the bus driver could buy water, and that they did not see any armed men in the market. Ahmad, who can no longer hear in one ear, said:

Boys my age went on the first trip [two weeks previously], but my family was late in preparing breakfast that day and they heard airplanes, so I missed the bus. The teachers told me to go on the next trip along with my younger brothers. I saw bodies torn into pieces, pieces of my friends. Yahia was burned. I also got burned, wounded in my chest and hands, and my right ear was injured, I can't hear with it, I use the left now. Many of my friends died.… [There are] too many for me to mention all of them. They are all from the same neighborhood, the Grand Mosque neighborhood.

The boys’ father, Mohammed Ali Ahmed Hanash, 50, said he was grateful they were alive. “I saw Yahia, my youngest, in the ICU [Intensive Care Unit], vomiting blood, fighting death,” before his condition improved. The family had been displaced by fighting two years earlier from the Qatabir border district of the Saada governorate, where another boy was killed by a previous airstrike and a girl was wounded by a sniper, their father said.

Children who were on the bus named four teachers from the mosque summer program who were killed in the airstrike: Yahya al-Bishri, Mohammed Abdulhafeez, and Ali al-Hijri, who were on the bus, and Ali Fa’ie, who was killed in the market. All four were listed by the Houthi-run Education Ministry as killed in the strike, with three identified as volunteers and one as a regular teacher.

The children said three boys came up to the bus while it was parked and were talking to their friends through the windows, including Muhammad Saeed Ali Salman, 13; Hamid Muhammad A’edah, 10; and Zakaria Abdul Wahab Ali Fay'a, 11, a student at the mosque school who had gone on the first day trip two weeks earlier. “Zakaria rode up to the bus on his little bicycle and was chatting with friends, waiting for the driver to return to ask for permission to come along on the trip again,” one boy said. “He was torn to pieces.”

The attack killed and maimed workers and customers at small businesses in the market, including children. Tarash Ahmad Salam al-Sam’ae, 40, said the bomb landed about 4.5 meters from his barbershop and wounded his sons Ibrahim, 14, and Abdulrahman, 16, who had opened the shop at 8 a.m.: “I was at home having breakfast when I heard the whizz of the [bomb] and the blast, so I ran [toward the barbershop]. The whole market was dusty, people were running, children were thrown on the ground, some were dead, and some were fighting death.”

Human Rights Watch also spoke to Ibrahim, who was evacuated to al-Talh Hospital, and to Abdulrahman, in al-Jamhouri Hospital in Saada. Abdulrahman, a secondary-school student, said he saw the bus park across the street from the barbershop at about 8:20 a.m., where the driver got out and entered a grocery store:

A customer I had finished shaving was sitting inside, and another customer was near the door about to enter. […] I didn't hear a sound. I didn't lose consciousness. I left the salon and walked in the direction of my house, east. I saw Ibrahim walking near me. I was covered with blood, the whole area was bloody, everything was blood. I felt pain in my lower back. I did not look at anyone, I did not know what happened to the customers, I walked straight ahead. I could only hear one voice, the voice of someone calling out “Hamd,” from far away, like an imaginary voice. I think it was our neighbor, Jaafar, who died later, calling on his little son. My brother and I lay down, I couldn't finish the walk home. A piece of shrapnel entered my lower back and there is another in my legs. They told me that my spine is intact, but I can't walk now.

Jaafar Thabet Naji, 46, and his son Hamd, 15, were wounded and taken to a nearby clinic, but the father later died of internal bleeding, said his nephew Hamdi Ali Thabet al-Sam’ae, 28, who also works as a barber in the market.

The attack also killed two customers at a nearby cafeteria, and wounded six people, including five workers: Faysal Muhammad Abdullah al-A’zi, 38, a cook; his son Mo’atasam Faysal, 16; his brothers Ali, 25, and Mansour, 20; his nephew Ezz el-Din Saleh, 10; and another relative, Abdo Ali Yusef al-Haouri, 19. The attack severely damaged the cafeteria.

“Three customers came in after 8 o’clock, so I was cooking fuul [a bean dish] with eggs for them, and suddenly I lost consciousness,” Faysal Abdullah al-A’zi said. The bomb blast had blown off the kitchen door, which hit him in the head. “Two of the three customers died immediately, the other was wounded in the leg.” He said he knew of no military targets in the market. Abdo Ali Al-Haouri, an assistant baker, said the attack also killed the owner of the grocery store next door, Mohammad Abdullah al-Marani, in his 20s. Al-Haouri said he saw the summer school bus arrive and park across the street, and described a busy marketplace:

The market was crowded, all the shops were open. The bus driver got out to get something from a grocery store. On that side of the street, there are two grocery stores and a vegetable shop, and on our side, there was a grocery store, the cafeteria, and a barbershop. In Dhahyan, many areas were hit, but at the beginning of the war [in 2015]. The last airstrike was half a month ago, far away from the market. There is no military presence here, the only checkpoints are outside the market. There is a police patrol that comes and goes regularly but it is just one car.

A video taken about an hour before the attack, which was recovered from the mobile phone of Osama Zeid al-Homran, one of the boys killed on the bus, shows at least 30 of the children who were part of the excursion at a cemetery for Houthi martyrs. At least one of the same children can be identified in graphic videos showing children and adults killed and wounded in the attack.

Photographs and videos of munition fragments show a 500-pound Mk-82 general purpose bomb fitted with a laser-guidance system that can strike within meters of its target. Markings visible on one of the remnants, a guidance fin, include “3LCX2,” a unique identification for US arms suppliers, known as a CAGE code, for General Dynamics Corporation, Ordnance and Tactical Systems Division, in Garland, Texas, which produces Mk-82 bombs. The CAGE code for Lockheed Martin was also marked on a different side of the guidance fin remnant. Human Rights Watch could not confirm that the remnants were found at the site. However, images of damage from the scene are consistent with the detonation of a large, impact-fuzed aerial bomb.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates say that the bombing of a school bus in Yemen by Saudi Arabian aircraft, which killed 51 people, was "unjustified".