By , Rawan Shaif
LONDON and SANAA — It was a hot, dry day in early July 2015. Salah Basrallah, a farmer in Yemen’s northern region of Saada, stood among a cluster of nine houses that used to comprise his little village of Eram. He surveyed the pulverized scene in silence. He had lost 21 family members in four consecutive airstrikes on his village, including his six children and wife. Nearby lay the remnants of an MK-80 series bomb, similar to those found at many other coalition strike locations and which the United States is known to supply to Saudi Arabia.
The attacks killed 55 people in total, according to local authorities in Saada, including 35 children. Several people were killed in follow-up airstrikes, as they tried to rescue people in the aftermath of the first bombing. It took survivors five days to dig out all the bodies; many had been shredded to pieces.
Fast forward to this year. With the coalition bombing campaign hitting the one-year mark, airstrikes continue to devastate the lives of innocent Yemeni families. In the capital of Sanaa, all that remains of the home where Judge Yahya Rubaid and his family once lived is a metal skeleton, chunks of concrete dangling from what used to be his living room. An airstrike hit at 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 25, as the judge and his wife, children, and grandchildren slept. A second strike followed shortly after, the sound echoing through the city.
According to family members, Rubaid was a judge on a case against Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, for treason in absentia. It is unclear whether his house was attacked for this reason. What is clear, however, is that there was no legally valid basis for bombing his home, as he and his family were civilians and under international law should not have been deliberately targeted.
Mohammed Abdullah, Rubaid’s nephew, recalled digging through mounds of rubble, finding no bodies beneath.
“We immediately ran to my uncle’s home and frantically began looking for their bodies to see who had survived,” he said. He called one of his daughters’ phones and heard its muffled ringing close by. When Abdullah returned to dig once more for signs of life, he soon realized that buried beneath the gray stones were body parts — lumps of flesh, bone, and sinew. A few feet away, half of Rubaid’s body was found on top of a gas station opposite his bedroom.
“We lost count of how many body parts we had found; no one was whole,” he said.
These gruesome scenes are just two examples of the horrors that Yemen has seen since the Saudi-led military coalition launched its air campaign in March 2015. On one side of this war is the Houthi armed group, often referred to as the “Popular Committees,” which is supported by armed groups loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and parts of the army. On the other side is the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and allied forces on the ground, usually referred to as muqawama, or the “resistance,” fighting on behalf of Hadi and his government.
The Houthis and their allies — armed groups loyal to Saleh — are the declared targets of the coalition’s 1-year-old air campaign. In reality, however, it is the civilians, such as Basrallah and Rubaid, and their children, who are predominantly the victims of this protracted war. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in airstrikes while asleep in their homes, when going about their daily activities, or in the very places where they had sought refuge from the conflict. The United States, Britain, and others, meanwhile, have continued to supply a steady stream of weaponry and logistical support to Saudi Arabia and its coalition.
Read more: Saudi Arabia Is Committing War Crimes in Yemen
Source: FP