Protest Rally Held in Yemen to Condemn Saudi Airstrike on Sana'a

TEHRAN (defapress) - Hundreds of people in Yemen staged a protest rally in Sana'a to voice their outrage at a recent Saudi airstrike that hit a residential area in the capital in which a dozen people, including women and children were killed.

News ID: 65743

Date: 27 August 2017 - 14:31

Demonstrators convened at the site of the deadly air raid in the southern neighborhood of Faj Atan on Saturday, a day after Saudi warplanes pounded two residential buildings there, killing 14 civilians, including two women and six children, and wounding 16 others.

Many human rights activists also took part in the demonstration, calling on the United Nations to launch an investigation into Saudi crimes against Yemeni civilians.

"We consider the aggression as a crime, a crime against humanity, and a war crime committed against the Yemeni people. I am surprised to find the United Nations and Human Rights Watch or other international organizations speaking about various crimes while the people of Yemen are suffering from crimes and massacres from the first day of aggression until today,” said Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen.

Protesters also carried signs and banners, on which anti-Saudi slogans were written. Children were also seen among demonstrators as a number of them held signs reading, "Stop killing children!”

"All the Yemeni activists demanded in their reports a neutral international commission in order to investigate the crimes committed against civilians,” said Hashem Sharafuddin, a human rights activist, Press TV reported.

Yemen’s Attorney General Abdulaziz Al-Baghdadi, who also attended the protest, described the crimes as unprecedented in the history of Yemen "when you see the remains of children.”

The Saudi military said in a rare statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, that "a technical mistake was behind” the deadly Friday air raid, admitting that dozens of Yemeni people had lost their lives due to a so-called glitch.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also strongly denounced that airstrike and said it was "deeply shocked and saddened” by the carnage.

On August 23, another Saudi strike against a hotel in the Arhab district of Sana’a province killed nearly 50 people and wounded scores of others.