(REPORT) — A primary school in Yemen was bombed by the Saudi-led coalition on Tuesday, and five people, including two children, were killed, medics told the Middle East Eye.
A rebel group puts the death toll at eight, with 15 wounded, according to AFP.
A military official told AFP that the strike was a “mistake.”
A video posted to social media Tuesday purports to show the bloody aftermath of the bombing. (Warning: video is graphic.)
https://twitter.com/I4Yemen/status/818889092188565504
The U.S.-backed coalition has long been condemned by human rights advocates for killing civilians throughout its nearly two-years-long campaign against rebel Houthi groups. In the past six months alone, the coalition has bombed a funeral, a hospital, and another school.
The enduring war, which the U.S. still supports by re-fueling coalition planes, has created an ongoing humanitarian crisis—with Oxfam warning in December that the country only has enough food to feed its population for the next several months.
#Saudi Co airstrike on Al Falah School in Nihm, #YEMEN today killing 7 children & principal & injuring 14+ @UNHumanRights @UNICEFEducation pic.twitter.com/sT0w2ghVrZ
— ARWA RIGHTS (@arwa_rights) January 10, 2017
“Yemen is being slowly starved to death,” said Mark Goldring, Oxfam Great Britain Chief Executive.
“First there were restrictions on imports—including much-needed food—when this was partially eased the cranes in the ports were bombed, then the warehouses, then the roads and the bridges. This is not by accident—it is systematic,” Goldring explained.
The effect has been mass starvation, and Al Jazeera reported Sunday that many families and children are only surviving by scavenging scraps of food from landfills and garbage bins.
“It is my daily attempt to stave off the death of my family by hunger,” one father of ten living in Sanaa told Al Jazeera. “I have become a frequent visitor of the rubbish dump.”
The Famine Emergency Warning System characterizes Yemen as “the largest food security emergency in the world.”
“The country’s economy, its institutions, its ability to feed and care for its people are all on the brink of collapse,” Goldring said, urging Western leaders to cut off arms sales to the coalition and push for an end to the war.
This work by Common Dreams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.