31st Mar 2015, airstrikes on margarine, soap and dairy factories in Al Hodeidah Yemen

Starting shortly before midnight on Tuesday 31st March 2015 through until dawn on Wednesday 1st April 2015,  Saudi-led coalition forces targeted the Yamani factory complex in Al Hodeidah, to the West of Yemen, which included margarine, soap and dairy factories. Reports state that at least 31 were killed and 11 more injured.

http://yemenobserver.com/news-national/1451-saudi-aggression-bombs-dairy-factory-in-hodeidah.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32142549

A local Yemeni said to Jamila: "Many factory workers were killed and dozens wounded, bodies charred turned into just skeletons or ash. These factories were some of the largest dairy factories in Yemen, in the private sector: they employed hundreds of workers and served a large segment of the society, including the provision of milk to children as it was the main dairy factory in the area. It would take 2 years and a $30 million investment to rebuild them."


An Amnesty International report stated:

A 23-year-old man injured in a strike that struck a factory in Hodeidah on 31 March was left paraplegic after a piece of shrapnel became lodged in his vertebrae. The director of the hospital inside the factory complex said the hospital was overwhelmed with casualties after the attack. The nearest military target, an army base, was more than 300 metres away.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/04/yemen-investigate-relentless-airstrikes-that-have-left-hundreds-of-civilians-dead/


HRW reported:

Starting at about 11:10 p.m. on March 31, one or more warplanes carried out four separate strikes that hit the dairy factory, three factory workers and three local residents told Human Rights Watch. Dr. Hani Mahfoodh, an emergency doctor at 22 May Hospital in Hodaida, which received most of the victims, told Human Rights Watch that the strikes killed at least 31 factory employees, for whom he provided the names, and wounded at least 11 more...

Two people who were about 100 to 200 meters from the factory, and another who was about 2 kilometers away, said they saw one or more planes take part in the attack. A factory worker told Human Rights Watch that after his shift ended at 11 p.m., he waited with colleagues at the factory gate for the employee bus. At 11:10 p.m., he heard the sound of aircraft, which he had seen bombing elsewhere in Hodaida earlier that evening. A few seconds later, he saw one of the factory warehouses explode. “We rushed to the doors of the nearest building full of staff, and held open the doors as people ran out,” he said.

A few minutes later he saw a second explosion in a part of the factory that housed packaging equipment, causing water boilers to explode. The ground shook beneath him, he said. He later discovered that the explosion also caused leaks in gas pipes used in the cooling process. The worker said he witnessed ambulance workers take several people who may have inhaled the gas fumes to a hospital.
He said that a few minutes later he saw a third explosion in another part of the factory, setting the building on fire. Three workers in the building died while trying to turn off the machines. There was a fourth explosion several minutes later in the same part of the factory.

Another factory worker said he was inside another factory building during the first explosion. He was wounded by the second explosion but remained to aid other wounded and the ambulance staff. “In the aftermath of the strikes I saw body parts and charred bodies and hands and legs scattered,” he told Human Rights Watch. “I could not sleep for two days afterward because of the terrible images in my mind.”

A third factory employee who saw the explosions said that fires continued to blaze until the next morning.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/15/yemen-factory-airstrike-killed-31-civilians-0 


WARNING, these videos are EXTREMELY GRAPHIC and DISTRESSING. They are put here as evidence to support the call for an independent enquiry into war crimes and to call on the West to stop supplying arms to Saudi Arabia.






The following daily report by the Legal Center for Rights and Development also confirms the attack.

Saudi/US air strike targeted Dairy factory in Hodeidah killing 30 and injuring 25 workers #OpDecisiveStorm pic.twitter.com/pogbBKyooB

— Hussain Albukhaiti (@HussainBukhaiti) April 1, 2015

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