On the 2nd November 2015, the Almasirah TV channel published further evidence of the Saudi led coalition dropping internationally banned cluster munitions on the Bani Sayah district in Razeh directorate in Saadah governorate.
The following video explains that the area had been under continuous bombardment over the previous 20 days, suffering more than 70 raids, during which cluster munitions were dropped, some detonating immediately and others lying in fields, waterways and roads where any unfortunate person or animal may stumble upon them.
Villagers speak of Saudi atrocities and their loss of family members as well as livestock. They highlight that due to the rural location, those people injured do not have access to medical attention. There are no ambulances or other modes of transport by which to take the injured to reach medical care, which results in an increase in the number of fatalities.
On 28th October 2015, the Saudi led coalition used suspected banned weapons causing terrible flesh injuries.
This was a post to Facebook at that time:
Saudi-led coalition uses internationally prohibited weapons on Yemeni civilians.
Khaled Ali from Tihama in Al-Hodeidah governorate in Yemen is a victim
of the internationally prohibited weapons used by the Saudi-led
coalition on Yemeni civilians. The victims arrived to the burns
center at the Republican hospital in the capital where doctors reported
that they had never witnessed such brutal and violent injuries from
weapons used by the coalition to date. The shrapnel injury causes a
total break down of skin and muscular tissue as well as nerve and vein
death and the degeneration of the muscle goes down to the bone. Doctors
expressed their shock and dismay at their inability to provide
assistance to the victims and have asked for foreign medical experts to
assist.
The following is a translation of the video report below by Almasirah TV:
The Republican Hospital Burn Center at Sanaa received 5 cases of burns of unknown type. Four of the victims died and one, Khaled, is battling the unfamiliar deadly wounds. Khaled was injured in Tihama district by bomb fragments from a Saudi raid. Khaled is suffering from lacerated flesh, death of tissue, and arteries extended to the bone. The doctors were astonished and they are unable to provide appropriate treatment. They remarked that it was the first time in their medical experience to witness such a case, as neither condition of the burns nor the shrapnel injuries were usual. Khaled is suffering from indescribable pain, crying that he is unable to sleep morning or night.
A human rights delegation that visited the hospital confirmed the existence of several deaths with a similar description, calling on all human rights organizations in the world to send chemical and non-traditional weapons experts for assessment and guidance in handling these cases.
WARNING: the following videos and images of the incident are extremely graphic and distressing. They are put here as evidence of war crimes to call for an independent UN
investigation and to call on Western countries to honour the Arms Treaty
and stop the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
On a positive note, Khaled was later reported to have travelled to Oman for treatment after this incident:
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.
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.
