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August 10, 2018

DUBAI/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Saudi-led coalition said on Friday it would investigate an air strike that killed dozens of children in Yemen, an apparent shift of stance on an attack Riyadh initially portrayed as a legitimate military action against its Houthi foes.

At least 40 children were killed in Thursday’s strike on a bus in northern Yemen, the armed Houthi group said, raising the toll of children killed in the raid, the latest in a series of mass casualty air strikes in Yemen’s war, from 29.

The strike by the Western-backed alliance outraged human rights groups and was strongly condemned by U.N. officials. Henrietta Fore, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF, said the “horrific” attack marked “a low point in (Yemen’s) brutal war”.

The United Nations called for an independent investigation of the raid which hit the bus as it drove through a market of Dahyan, a town in the Houthis’ home province of Saada.

Announcing the coalition probe, the Saudi Press Agency quoted an alliance official as saying: “The coalition is firmly committed to investigating all claims regarding mistakes or violations of international law, to sanction those who caused these incidents and to provide assistance to the victims.”

The Western-backed alliance had said the air strikes had targeted missile launchers and were carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law, describing them as a “legitimate military action”.

Houthi-run al-Masirah TV cited the group’s health minister Taha Mutawakil as saying that the estimated number of casualties stood at 51 killed including 40 children, and at least 79 people wounded, of which 56 were children.

The ICRC’s Yemen Twitter account reported the same toll on Friday, citing authorities in Saada.

It had said on its Twitter account on Thursday its medical team at the ICRC-supported hospital in Saada had received the bodies of 29 children, all under 15 years old. The hospital also received 48 wounded people, among them 30 children.

The coalition carried out new air strikes on Friday, killing a girl and injuring several other people whose home was targeted in the Marib province, east of the capital Sanaa, al-Masirah TV said.

The Houthi-run Saba news agency said their forces fired a short-range ballistic missile at a camp of military units backed by the Saudi-led coalition, south of Marib.

The Houthis on Friday hailed a call by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s for an “independent and prompt investigation” into the air strike.

“We welcome the call of the secretary general and we are ready to cooperate,” the head of the Houthis’ supreme revolutionary committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said in a tweet.

In Paris, the French foreign ministry said France condemned the strike and backed a U.N. call to bring all parties in the war together for talks in Geneva on Sept 6.

Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement in a three-year-old war, lies on one of the world’s most important trade routes for oil tankers, the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Dubai and Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Catherine Evans, Raissa Kasolowsky, William Maclean)

The post Coalition announces Yemen air raid probe, Houthis report 40 children killed appeared first on One America News Network.



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