Yesterday, 26 children were reportedly killed in attacks in ad-Durayhimi, Yemen. Children and families continue to be victims of intense and senseless violence. UNICEF calls on all parties to the conflict to stop the war on children in Yemen once and for all. #ChildrenUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/1JkxkjGVAO<doc-sep>This is not a column about Donald Trump. It’s also not about Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen or Robert Mueller, and it’s certainly not about Rudolph Giuliani and his way with words. On the contrary, this is a column about the things we are not paying attention to, and why we should. On 9 August, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen against a Houthi-led rebellion dropped a bomb on a school bus packed with children. According to reports, the excited kids had been on a school trip marking the end of their summer classes, and as they passed a busy marketplace, the bomb directly hit their vehicle. The results were horrific. Of the 54 people killed, 44 were children, with most between the ages of six ando 11. The pictures of the dead and injured children, some of whom can be seen wearing their blue Unicef backpacks, are beyond heartbreaking. And the tragedy in Yemen is unrelenting. Just this past Thursday, a mere two weeks after the school bus attack, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed yet another 26 children and four women fleeing the fighting in the western province of Hudaydah. If this sounds to you like I’m relating a story about how terrible the civil war in Yemen is, then you’d be correct, although – and let’s be honest here – the war in Yemen occupies almost none of our collective political attention today. Could it be that we don’t care all that much about this war because Yemenis are Muslim, brown, and poor, and we’ve already been droning them for years on end? The reality is that the war has created the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe today. Three-quarters of the population, some 22 million Yemenis, require humanitarian assistance and protection. About 8.4 million people hang on the brink of starvation and another 7 million lie malnourished. Since 2015, more than 28,000 thousand people have been killed or injured, and many thousands more have died from causes exacerbated by war, such as a cholera epidemic that has afflicted more than a million people and claimed over 2,300 lives. At least one child dies every 10 minutes from causes linked to the war, according to the United Nations. But this is also a story about the responsibility of the United States. A report by CNN indicates that the bomb used in the school bus airstrike was a 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, one of the largest US defense contractors. Having facilitated the sale to the Saudi-led coalition of the weapon used to kill these children, does the United States bear any responsibility for their deaths? Undoubtedly. For one thing, these latest bombings are hardly the only times the Saudi-led coalition has killed civilians from the air. An independent monitoring group, the Yemen Data Project, found that there have been 55 airstrikes against civilian vehicles and buses in the first seven months of this year alone, and that of the 18,000 airstrikes between March 2015 to April 2018, almost a third (31%) of the targets were non-military (either civilians or civilian infrastructure) and another 33% of the strikes were classified as having unknown targets. That’s 64% of the strikes that could not be determined as having clear military targets. And then there’s existing law. In a 2017 report, the American Bar Association concluded that “in the context of multiple credible reports of recurring and highly questionable strikes … further sales [of arms] under both the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act are prohibited until the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia takes effective measures to ensure compliance with international law and the President submits relevant certifications to the Congress”. The United States is certainly aware of how poorly the coalition is prosecuting the war. How can it not be? The US provides aerial targeting assistance to the coalition, for Pete’s sake, along with intelligence sharing and mid-flight aerial refueling for coalition aircraft. And of course, the US supplies (with the UK) the bulk of the coalition’s weapons. Lots of them. Hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth. This failed strategy was begun under the Obama administration, not under Trump. But when coalition fighter jets bombed a funeral hall and killed over 140 people in October 2016, the Obama administration began mulling their options. In his last weeks in office, Obama finally restricted sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia amid concerns over civilian casualties, but by May 2017, sales resumed when the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, overturned the ban. Obama was no peace-monger president, however. His administration oversaw the sales of more weapons than any other president since 1945, and most of the arms sold during his time in office went to Saudi Arabia. Opposition to the US’s blank-check policy regarding this war has been growing not only among lawyers but also among lawmakers. Earlier this year, Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy introduced a joint resolution in the Senate to end US support for the coalition, though it was effectively defeated in March by a vote of 55-44. (John McCain did not vote.) On 22 August, Murphy also introduced an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would have cut off funds for the coalition until the secretary of defense could certify that rules for the protection of civilians were being properly followed. His efforts were blocked by the Republican senator Richard Shelby, whose donors, perhaps not coincidentally, are Boeing (also a major defense contractor) and Lockheed Martin. With Trump, the situation is as you would expect. It is his administration after all that bans Yemenis from coming to the United States. The massive $717bn National Defense Authorization Act, recently signed into law by the president, does contain specific limited language designed to minimize civilian deaths in Yemen. The president, however, has issued a signing statement. He won’t abide by these provisions of the law. Unsurprisingly, his justification is that he has “exclusive constitutional authorities as commander in chief and as the sole representative of the nation in foreign affairs”. Trump’s indifference to the suffering in Yemen is to be expected, But what about ours?<doc-sep>Children Again Pay The Price in Yemen's War As Focus Shifts To Accountability Enlarge this image toggle caption picture alliance/picture alliance via Getty Images picture alliance/picture alliance via Getty Images For the second time this month the United Nations has blamed the Saudi-led forces fighting in Yemen's civil war for an airstrike that killed children. There were conflicting reports about the death toll in the strike, which occurred Thursday, and about who committed it. But the United Nations top humanitarian official issued a statement blaming the attack on the Saudi-led forces, saying that at least 26 people were killed including 22 children and four women. "This is the second time in two weeks that an airstrike by the Saudi-led Coalition has resulted in dozens of civilian casualties," said Mark Lowcock, U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs. On Aug. 9, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres blamed the Saudi-led coalition for an airstrike that hit a school bus killing at least 50 people. The two statements — both unusually strong for the U.N. — highlight the growing concern over what appear to be especially indiscriminate attacks in a war already marked by high civilian casualties. Enlarge this image toggle caption Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP The coalition said the school bus strike was targeting Houthi militants that had fired a missile. There had not been a response reported as of Friday afternoon to the reports of the attack Thursday. Members of the U.S. Congress and human rights advocates have objected to U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition, which includes targeting information, weapons sales and mid-air refueling of planes. CNN reported that the bomb that hit the school bus was U.S.-made. The civil war started with a 2014 uprising by a faction led by the Houthis —a Muslim religious minority. In 2015, the Houthis captured the capital ousting the sitting, Saudi-backed government. That was when the Saudi's formed a coalition with the United Arab Emirates and other allies to join the battle against the Houthis with air forces and ground troops. Yemen, a rugged, poor country, has had a history of localized battles. But this war has escalated and intensified with the Saudi-led coalition's entry. The coalition says it's fighting the Houthis because they're backed by Iran and note that the Houthis have fired missiles into Saudi Arabia. The U.N. said earlier this month that it had documented 6,592 civilians killed since the coalition entered the war in 2015 — saying coalition attacks account for most of them. The war has also led to food shortages and the spread of disease. There were conflicting reports about Thursday's strike. The Associated Press reported Houthi sources saying an attack in the ad-Durayhimi district near the port city of Hodeidah killed 30 people. The AP said that there were also accounts saying just nine were killed. The state news service for the UAE — a member of the Saudi-led coalition — reported that the Houthis fired a missile at a village in the area that killed one child and injured dozens of other people. It was unclear if this referred to the same incident the Houthis blamed on the coalition. The statement by the U.N.'s Lowcock, blaming the coalition, came out after those reports. Also Friday, Human Rights Watch released a report saying the Saudi-led coalition has failed to credibly investigate allegations of war crimes in Yemen. The report looked at 75 reported investigations by a team of investigators the coalition said would collect evidence and delve into cases of civilian casualties. Human Rights Watch said the investigations failed to meet international standards of independence and transparency and did not hold officers responsible for their actions. The report said the countries supporting the coalition need to press for better accountability. "Those countries that continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia — including the U.S., U.K. and France — risk complicity in future unlawful attacks, particularly given that coalition assurances to take action have proven hollow," it stated.<doc-sep>“We determined it was the right thing to do in defense of their own countries, but also to restore the rightful government there,’’ he told reporters. “Our conduct there is to try to keep the human cost of innocents being killed accidentally to an absolute minimum.’’ The American goal, Mr. Mattis said, is to encourage the combatants to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, responded to Mr. Gargash, the Emirati foreign affairs minister on Twitter. She said the United Nations report would not be credible unless it cited the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as the head of the Houthi movement, as responsible for the civilian massacres. Political factions and militias have been fighting for control of Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, since power-sharing talks collapsed in 2014 and the Houthis ousted the internationally backed government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Since then, fighting has devolved into proxy warfare, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates arming and fighting alongside a disparate group of Islamist, tribal and regional militias against the Houthis, who control Sana, the capital, as well as the major port of Al Hudaydah and their ancestral territories along the Saudi border. The Saudis and their allies have accused Iran of aiding the Houthis. Iran has denied involvement, despite evidence that the rebels are using Iranian weaponry, including missiles. The report accused the Saudi-led coalition of routinely having failed to consult its own “no-strike list” of more than 30,000 sites in Yemen, including refugee camps and hospitals. It also said the Saudi Air Force had not cooperated with investigators about its targeting procedures.<doc-sep>
At least 26 children have been killed in the latest round of airstrikes in Yemen, the United Nations has said. The organisation’s humanitarian office reported that at least four women also died in a strike by the Saudi-led coalition – two weeks after a coalition air attack on a school bus killed at least 29 children. The UN’s humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, confirmed on Friday that a coalition airstrike on Thursday had killed 22 children and four women who were trying to escape the fighting in the Durayhimi district, in the Hudaydah governorate. He said a second attack in the same area that day had killed a further four children. “I echo the recent statement by the secretary-general on Yemen, condemning such attacks on civilians and calling for an impartial, independent and prompt investigation into these most recent incidents,” said Lowcock, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “I am also deeply concerned by the proximity of attacks to humanitarian sites, including health facilities and water and sanitation infrastructure,” he said. “The UN and partners are doing all they can to reach people with assistance. Access for humanitarian aid workers to reach people in need is critical to respond to the massive humanitarian crisis in Yemen. “People need to be able to voluntarily flee the fighting to access humanitarian assistance too. The parties to the conflict must respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and those with influence over them must ensure that everything possible is done to protect civilians.” Two weeks earlier, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in the country killed dozens of people, including children travelling on a bus through a market, in Sa’ada province. The International Committee of the Red Cross said at least 29 children aged younger than 15 had been killed, while a further 48 people of all ages were wounded, including 30 children. The Reuters news agency reported that the western-backed alliance fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen had said the airstrikes targeted missile launchers used to attack the southern Saudi city of Jizan the previous day, killing a Yemeni civilian there. The Saudi-led coalition accused the Houthis of using children as human shields and said the strikes on 9 August were carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law. Henrietta Fore, the executive director of Unicef, said: “I had hoped that the outrage that followed the Saada attack in Yemen two weeks ago would be a turning point in the conflict. Yesterday’s reported attacks in Ad-Durayhimi, killing 26 children, indicate that it was not. “I – once again – call for the warring parties, those who have influence over them, the UN security council and the international community to take action and end this conflict once and for all. “The lives of thousands of vulnerable children across Yemen must be a priority for all.” The UN ranks Yemen as the world’s “largest humanitarian operation. Three in four Yemenis are in need of assistance. In 2018, the UN and partners have reached more than 8 million people with direct assistance.”