A NEW report by Amnesty International reveals that precision-guided bombs made by the United States have been used in Saudi-led deadly airstrikes against civilians in Yemen, saying that the US, the UK and France, which provide arms to the Riyadh regime, are complicit in ‘serious violations of international law, including possible war crimes’ committed by the kingdom during the war.
In a just-released report, the UK-based rights group said that the ordnance, manufactured by US company Raytheon, were used in a June airstrike on Yemen’s south western province of Ta’izz that killed six people, including three children.
‘It is unfathomable and unconscionable that the USA continues to feed the conveyor belt of arms flowing into Yemen’s devastating conflict,’ said Rasha Mohamed, Amnesty’s Yemen researcher.
The Amnesty International report reveals that precision-guided bombs made by the United States have been used in Saudi-led deadly airstrikes against civilians in Yemen, saying that the US, the UK and France, which provide arms to the Riyadh regime, are complicit with the violations of international law and possible war crimes committed by the kingdom during the war.
The UK-based rights group said that the ordnance, manufactured by US company Raytheon, were used in a June airstrike on Yemen’s province of Ta’izz that killed civilians.
The rights group analysed photographs of the remnants of the weapon dug out from the site of the strike by family members, concluding that the bomb that hit a residential building was a US-made 500 pound (230kg) GBU-12 Paveway II.
Mohamed lashed out at the US, the UK and France for supplying arms to the Saudi-led coalition, holding them accountable for ‘human rights violations’ and ‘possible war crimes’ in Yemen.
A United Nations panel of experts has uncovered parts of British-made weapons at the site of a Saudi-led strike in the Yemeni capital.
‘Despite the slew of evidence that the Saudi and Emirati-led coalition has time and again committed serious violations of international law, including possible war crimes, the USA and other arms-supplying countries such as the UK and France remain unmoved by the pain and chaos their arms are wreaking on the civilian population,’ Mohamed said.
‘Intentionally directing attacks against civilians or civilian objects, disproportionate attacks and indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians are war crimes,’ she added.
She said that the Western trio ‘share responsibility for these violations,’ by ‘knowingly’ supplying arms to the Saudi-led coalition.
‘Arms-supplying states cannot bury their heads in the sand and pretend they do not know of the risks associated with arms transfers to parties to this conflict who have been systematically violating international humanitarian law,’ she said.
