4th June 2015, coalition airstrike hits cluster of houses killing 8 children, 3 women and destroying livestock in Majz, North Yemen

On 4th June 2015, the Saudi led coalition airstrikes hit a small cluster of houses, in al-Maghsal area, four times, killing 8 children, 3 women and 70 animals.

WARNING: the media below is graphic and distressing. It is placed here as evidence as war crimes to call for an independent investigation and to call on the international community to respect the Arms Treaty by stopping the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabic as they are clearly targeting civilians. 

This is Amnesty International's report of the incident:

AL-MAGHSAL, AL-JA’MALA, MAJZ, SA’DA, 4 JUNE

The al-Shayba family lived in a tight-knit cluster of small houses in al-Maghsal area in Majz, north-west of Sa’da city. On the morning of 4 June, four consecutive airstrikes ripped through the homes. 11 members of the al-Shayba family, eight children and three women, were killed, while a woman and two children and were injured.

Fragments of MK 80 bombs, which have been systematically used in coalition forces’ air bombardments, were found in the ruins of the house by Amnesty International. As with many other coalition airstrikes, there was no evident military objective at or near the site of the multiple strikes, whose victims were all children and women.

Ali Qassem Salah al-Shayba, an animal trader and father of four, told Amnesty International:

“I was by the river on my way back home when our homes were bombed, at about 10am. It was a massacre; what can I tell you? A massacre. I lost my son Hassan, four, and my daughter Taysir, 12; my mother, Munawwar, my sister Aziza and her daughter Salsabil, six; my brother’s son and daughter, Mohammed and Yousra, aged nine and 16, and my cousin Shama’a and her three daughters, Altaf, Zahra & Batul, aged one, three, and six. My wife and my other four-year-old son were injured, along with my 16-year-old niece.”

Surviving family members said that the body of three-year old Zahra had not yet been recovered when Amnesty International visited the site four weeks after the attack.

“A family of 20 lived here, my brothers and I and our families. It was a two-storey house. There were only women and children. And we don’t have weapons, we are livestock traders. We have nothing to do with the war. I had 20 cows and over 50 goats. But they [coalition forces] destroyed it all,” said Ali Qassem Salah al--Shayba, pointing to the carcasses of the dead animals still strewn around the house.

‘BOMBS FALL FROM THE SKY DAY AND NIGHT’CIVILIANS UNDER FIRE IN NORTHERN YEMENIndex: MDE 31/2548/2015 Amnesty International October 2015

The following daily report by the Legal Center for Rights and Development confirms the attack (as well as many others) reporting 12 civilians killed in this residential area, many of them children.

Ref: 15060401