26th May 2015, Saudi led coalition airstrike hits home in Dar Saber village, Yemen, killing 8 including 6 children

On 26th May 2015, the Saudi led coalition airstrikes hit a family home in the village of Dar Saber outside of Ta'iz city, killing 8 family members (6 of them children) and injuring 7 others (2 of them children).

This is Amnesty International's report of the incident:

DAR SABER VILLAGE, TA’IZ, 26 MAY

Eight members of the Sayed family, six of them children, were killed and seven others, including two children, were injured when coalition forces bombed their home in Dar Saber village, outside Ta’iz city on 26 May at 5am.

One of the remaining residents and neighbours from the village, Ali Qaed al-Hakm, told Amnesty International:

“On that day, we were surprised to hear the plane loudly at 5am. There was an explosion and we felt an immense pressure, so we opened the windows. After that, my daughter and I headed to the kitchen and said ‘alhamdullilah’ [thanks be to God] and then we saw a second explosion that you could not imagine. The village was collapsing over our heads and all we tried to do was to find out the source of the explosion. But suddenly we heard a man screaming ‘Save us! Save us!’ and we found out that it was Khaled Sayed’s house that was struck. Everyone thought this village was safe before this incident, it was full of displaced people who had come here to escape the conflict in the city. But everyone left after this airstrike.”

It is unclear whether Khaled Sayed’s home was the intended target of the airstrike, According to neighbours he is not associated with the Huthis and he was in fact not at home at the time of the strike, but several members of his family, including his children were. Dar Saber village has a common trait with other airstrikes: it is close to a Huthi/Saleh-loyalist-controlled military camp which has been repeatedly targeted by coalition airstrikes. This was the first and only airstrike on the village of Dar Sabr, which encompasses a cluster of 80 houses. Khaled Sayed’s house is 150-200 meters south of Muntazah Zayed, a park which has been repeatedly targeted by airstrikes and which had been used by the anti-Huthi Popular Resistance Committees (PRCs) and then by the Huthis for a short time after. It appears possible that the intended target of this strike was the nearby military camp (further up the mountain, hundreds of meters away) but that coalition forces failed to take the necessary precautions to minimize potential harm to civilians in the area.

'NOWHERE SAFE FOR CIVILIANS'AIRSTRIKES AND GROUND ATTACKS IN YEMENIndex: MDE 31/2291/2015 Amnesty International August 2015

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