Saudi Arabia – a country that now sits on the U.N. Women’s Rights Commission – just executed ten women in an aerial bombardment that appeared to target a wedding procession in Yemen.
According to Haaretz, a prominent Israeli newspaper, witnesses and health officials speaking on the condition of anonymity say an airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition warplane struck a wedding east of Yemen’s capital on Sunday, killing ten women (possibly including the bride-to-be).
The officials said the Sunday airstrike targeted the women as they marched to a village in Maarib province.
In February of this year, another Saudi airstrike killed nine women and one child after striking a funeral gathering in Yemen. In October of last year, Saudi Arabia struck another funeral procession, killing 140 and wounding a further 525 in what was aptly dubbed a “lake of blood” by witnesses.
In its over two years of aggressive crimes in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has struck prisons (by definition, prisoners have no means of escaping an air strike; they are imprisoned), well over 100 hospitals, wedding parties, refugee camps, food trucks, factories, transport routes, agricultural land, residential areas, and schools.
Last year, the Guardian revealed data that showed one in three Saudi air raids in Yemen were hitting civilian sites. In five of the 18 months surveyed, the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition hit more non-military sites than military sites.
In fact, the U.K. government’s Ministry of Defense recently admitted it is aware of at least 318 cases that have potentially violated international law in Yemen. Even with this knowledge, the United Kingdom still continues to directly enable Saudi aggression.
Reuters reported that a U.N. human rights official has documented 136 civilian and non-combatant deaths in the last two weeks of December alone. The official said the U.N. is “deeply concerned at the recent surge in civilian casualties in Yemen as a result of intensified air strikes by the … coalition, following the killing of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa on Dec. 4.”
In the meantime, Donald Trump’s hawkish ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, has in the past few days been ranting about Iran’s alleged interference in Yemen, which is still yet to be proven. Note that Haley has painted Iran as the major aggressive party in Yemen even while Iran is currently bombing no one and even as Saudi Arabia has been documented carrying out numerous atrocities. The only missile strike Iran has conducted recently was in Syria — in response to an ISIS-inspired attack that occurred on Iranian soil.
Haley alleges that a missile fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen at Saudi Arabia’s international airport was supplied by the Iranian government. Even if it was – which is a recurring allegation that has never been conclusively proven – the missile didn’t kill anyone. The only party actively massacring people in Yemen is Saudi Arabia, yet Haley continues to give the radical Islamic kingdom a free pass to do whatever it pleases.
Remember this the next time they start beating the drums of war against Iran over its alleged activities in Yemen. If Iran doing close to nothing in Yemen is enough to anger you, try to imagine how the families of those needlessly massacred by Saudi Arabia feel whenever they witness a “lake of blood” filling up their homes, schools, and hospitals.
