108 Yemenis killed by mines, cluster bombs, other war remnants since truce: Report
A report says at least 108 Yemeni civilians have been killed by landmines, cluster bombs, and other fatal remnants of the Saudi-led war since April, when a UN-brokered truce came into effect in the impoverished Arab country.
The Yemen Executive Mine Action Centre (YEMAC), a human rights body based in the capital Sana’a, provided the information on Sunday.
As many as 216 others, it added, had also been wounded during the period by the same causes.
The coalition invaded Yemen in March 2015 to return a Riyadh-friendly government back to power. It has fallen short of the objective so far, while killing around 13,000 Yemenis and creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The United Nations-mediated ceasefire came into force on April 2, and has been extended twice ever since. Many reports, though, have blamed the invading coalition for numerous violations of the agreement.
The YEMAC said Yemen was in need of proper supplies that could help it carry out bomb disposal operations throughout the country.
The truce has ordered that the Yemeni authorities be provided with the required means that could help them dig up the unexploded devices. The Saudi-led coalition was, however, preventing their provision amid an all-out siege that it has been enforcing on Yemen since starting the war in 2015, the report added.
As part of its efforts to implement the siege, the Saudi-led coalition has been preventing the country from exporting its oil, despite Sana’a’s heavy dependence on crude sales’ revenues. Yemeni officials say the coalition has so far impounded at least 12 tankers laden with overseas-bound oil.
The Saudi-led coalition has also been found culpable for destroying thousands of water provision facilities, including dams, and contaminating Yemen’s water supplies.
Last month, Abdul Karim al-Safiani, deputy director of Yemen’s Water Resource Organization, said he had discovered high levels of radioactive substances and toxic metals in freshwater resources in Yemen’s maritime province of al-Hudaydah.
