Dozens, mostly women and children, were killed in the bombing at a wedding party in Yemen by an alleged Saudi Arabia airstrike. Riyadh, who has air supremacy in the area, denied responsibility.
29 September 2015
According to the latest figures, more than 2,300 civilians were killed in Yemeni conflict since it started in March 2015.
“If they [the Saudis] saw all these [wedding party] guests as collateral damage, that is a very serious and very clear violation of the laws of war,” Belkis Wille, a Yemen and Kuwait researcher at Human Rights in Sanaa, Yemen, told RT.
Belkis Wille also added that the laws of war include “a key principle of proportionality” that forbids striking out at areas if the number of civilian casualties there would be higher than the number of combatants hit.
The death toll in the Tuesday air strike on a wedding in Yemen has risen to 135, according to the UN statement. “This may be the single deadliest incident since the start of the conflict,” UN human rights agency spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters.
The armed conflict in Yemen has claimed the lives of 2,355 civilians in the last six months, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). UN data does not include 131 civilian victims of Tuesday’s airstrike on a wedding party, RIA Novosti reports.
“In fact…they bombed the wedding party, regardless who is the groom and who is the bride. It is actually a massacre, whether we like it or not, whether with agree with this coalition or not. Six months of heavy bombardment, definitely the civilian casualties are escalating day after day. This is the silent war. I am surprised nobody is paying attention to this war where civilian are killed," Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of London-based 'al-Quds al-Arabi' pan-Arab daily newspaper told RT.
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“Actually, this is a daily routine now that Saudi-led coalition warplanes are bombing civilians in Yemen under the pretext of shelling the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh opposition,” Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of London-based 'al-Quds al-Arabi', an independent pan-Arab daily newspaper told RT.
“The Houthis don’t have fighter jets,” he said. “[The Saudis] keep saying that it’s somebody else... the Saudis yesterday, for instance, denied it was them, that it must have been the Houthis. For god sake, the Houthis don’t have fighter jets. Nobody is conducting airstrikes but the Saudis... The UN and the international community need to directly condemn the Saudis for these attacks, they need to take harder line," political analyst Hisham Omeisy in Sana’a told RT.
The bombing of a wedding party in Yemen by an apparent Saudi Arabia airstrike has killed at least 131 people, medics said on Tuesday.
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack on the Yemeni village.
“The Secretary-General has consistently stated that there is no military solution to the conflict in Yemen. Its continuation will only bring more human suffering and destruction. Earlier today addressing the United Nations General Assembly, he condemned the disregard shown by all sides for human life,” said the statement.
28 September 2015
Two missiles reportedly tore through two tents in the Al-Wahijah village during the incident, local residents told Reuters.
The Saudi-led coalition strongly denied any role in the deadly airstrike, saying that "there have been no air operations by the coalition in that area for three days."
"The coalition knows its responsibility and will always acknowledge a mistake if we make it. Take into consideration the chaotic situation in Yemen, with several armed elements and forces active around the country. Also, people sometimes cannot distinguish between canon, mortar and Katyusha (missiles)," Coalition spokesman Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asseri said.
According to the local official the death toll has reached 30.
"The bodies of 31 people, including children, have been taken to a hospital in Mokha," a medical official, told AFP, adding that dozens of people were wounded, some of them seriously.
At least 27 people, including 12 women and 8 children, have been killed in an air strike on a wedding party in the village of al-Wahijah in Taiz province, southwest Yemen, local residents told Reuters.
Witnesses spoke of having seen mutilated bodies sprawled on the ground after the attack. Many of the dead appear to have been women and children.