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U.N. condemns airstrikes that killed 106 in Yemen

 
Published March 19, 2016

GENEVA — The top U.N. human rights official condemned the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen on Friday, citing repeated attacks on civilian targets in airstrikes, including an attack on a crowded village market this week that killed 106 people.

U.N. officials who went to the site of the attack Tuesday in Hajjah province found that airstrikes there had killed 119 people, including 22 children. The attack on the market was the second deadliest in Yemen since the Saudi-led airstrikes began, after an airstrike hit a wedding party in September, killing at least 131 people.

The Saudis are backing the contested government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi against rebels, known as the Houthis, who are aligned with the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis have been pressuring the United States for support in the conflict, saying their archrival, Iran, is backing the Houthis. Saudi Arabia said Thursday its military coalition will scale down operations in Yemen.

U.N. officials recorded the names of 96 people who died in the strikes, and they found 10 more bodies that were burned beyond recognition. An additional 40 people were wounded, "but that may be a low estimate," said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein.

The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly denied striking civilian targets during operations against Houthi rebels and affiliated forces. But U.N. officials said they had found no evidence of any military targets near the scene of the airstrikes, and al-Hussein said that may amount to a violation of international law.

Indiscriminate attacks by Houthi forces and their allies have also caused civilian casualties and could also qualify as international crimes, he said.

The coalition airstrikes came three weeks after its aircraft bombed another market, this time in a district of Sana, the capital, killing at least 39 civilians. The latest attack pushed the number of civilian casualties to close to 9,000, the United Nations said, with 3,218 killed and 5,778 injured. The fighting also has displaced millions and pushed the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of famine.

"It would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together," al-Hussein said in a sharp rebuttal of the coalition's denials.

He was alluding not only to Houthis and the militias fighting with them but also to groups backing al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

The coalition has "hit markets, hospitals, clinics, schools, factories, wedding parties and hundreds of private residences in villages, towns and cities," al-Hussein said, and it continues to do so "with unacceptable regularity."

At best, the coalition's distinction between civilian and military targets was "woefully inadequate," al-Hussein added, and "at worst we are possibly looking at the commission of international crimes by the coalition."

Moreover, despite their repeated promises to investigate these incidents, "we have yet to see progress in any such investigations," he said.

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Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.