Saudi Fighters Raid Yemeni Capital

TEHRAN (defapress)- Saudi warplanes carried out a string of airstrikes against targets in the Yemeni capital city of Sana'a as relentless aggression against the impoverished Arab country continues.

News ID: 76349

Date: 23 March 2019 - 17:16

According to local reports, Saudi fighter jets targeted al-Dailami airbase among other points on Saturday, without providing any information about the extent of damage, Yemeni News reported.

Every day, three civilians are killed in Yemen amid the deadly campaign led by the regime in Riyadh against the impoverished country, according to a report co-sponsored by aid group Oxfam.

Since mid-December 2018, persisting violence and war have killed one person every eight hours, according to the report.

The report further noted that the number of fatalities had doubled in the provinces of Hajjah and Ta'iz.

The date is when a UN-sponsored ceasefire was agreed between Yemen’s Ansarullah movement and Saudi-backed forces during talks in Sweden. The Stockholm negotiations were supposed to come up with a mechanism to end the war on Yemen that began in March 2015.

Although a truce had reduced hostilities in Hudaydah, the report said, a third of over 230 civilians killed nationwide, including 56 children, were reported in that province. Civilian death toll, which the UN reported was as high as 100 a week in 2018, has dropped but it remains unacceptably high following the ceasefire, the report added.

Muhsin Siddiquey, Oxfam’s Yemen Country Director, said more Yemenis were also dying due to lack of food and basic necessities.

“Every day that passes without concrete progress towards peace, more Yemenis lose their lives and the suffering deepens for those struggling to find food and shelter amid the world’s worst humanitarian disaster,” he stated.

“The backers of the warring parties are complicit in this man-made crisis; we call on them to stop arming the belligerents. They and the rest of the international community need to do all they can to help bring about a lasting peace in Yemen,” Siddiquey added.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.

Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding thousands.

Official UN figures say that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March 2015. But the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) believes that at least 56,000 people have lost their lives in the war.

Save the Children, a charity, has reported that more than 84,700 children under the age of five may have starved to death in Yemen since the Saudi regime and a coalition of its allies launched the brutal war on the already-impoverished nation.

Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fuelled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

A number of Western countries, the US, the UK, and France in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.

An Oxfam representative stated that the US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war".

“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, told RT, adding that "British, French, American governments are all behind this, they are all supporting this war".

A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.

Message end/