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March 17th, 2016 
Awake Goy The United Nations has for months stated that the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition, which has been waging a destructive war in Yemen since late March 2015, is responsible for two-thirds of civilian casualties there.
Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, once again confirmed this fact in a March 4 press briefing.
“Civilian casualties continue to mount in Yemen,” Colville stated. “During February, a total of at least 168 civilians were killed and 193 injured, around two-thirds of them by coalition airstrikes.”
More specifically, the U.N. says the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for killing 117 civilians and wounding 129 more, or 70 percent of civilians killed and 67 percent of civilians injured.
In September, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights had said the same, estimating that “almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths had allegedly been caused by coalition airstrikes, which were also responsible for almost two-thirds of damaged or destroyed civilian public buildings.”
The U.N. also indicated in its March briefing that the violence exacted upon the Yemeni people is increasing. The number of people killed nearly doubled between January and February, the latter seeing the worst violence since September.
“There have also been worrying allegations,” Colville added, “that coalition forces dropped cluster bombs on a mountainous area to the south of the Amran cement factory, where a military unit loyal to the Houthis appears to have been the target.”
Cluster bombs are banned around much of the world. The Convention on Cluster Munitions, the 2008 international treaty that bans the weapon, has been signed by 118 countries, but the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have refused to endorse it.
In January, the Saudi-led coalition dropped U.S.-made cluster bombs on civilian neighborhoods in Yemen’s capital Sanaa. Human Rights Watch blasted the attack, saying the “inherently indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions makes such attacks serious violations of the laws of war. The deliberate or reckless use of cluster munitions in populated areas amounts to a war crime.”
“The coalition’s repeated use of cluster bombs in the middle of a crowded city suggests an intent to harm civilians, which is a war crime,” Human Rights Watch Arms Director Stephen Goose added. “These outrageous attacks show that the coalition seems less concerned than ever about sparing civilians from war’s horrors.”
On the other side of the war, the U.N. says indiscriminate shelling by local armed rebel groups affiliated with the Houthis or army units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was responsible for 49 civilian casualties, or 29 percent of civilians killed in February
Source Article from https://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2016/03/17/usa-backed-saudi-coalition-responsible-for-two-thirds-of-civilian-casualties-in-yemen/
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