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U.S. 'Fine Tuning' Of Saudi Airstrike Target List Creates Results
10
August, 2018
U.S.
Deepens Role in Yemen Fight, Offers Gulf Allies Airstrike-Target
Assistance - Wall
Street Journal -
June 12, 2018
The U.S. military is providing its Gulf allies with intelligence to fine-tune their list of airstrike targets ...
---
A Saudi-led coalition battling in Yemen said it carried out a deadly attack in the rebel-held north on Thursday, which the Red Cross said hit a bus carrying children.
...
"Following an attack this morning on a bus driving children in Dahyan Market, northern Saada, (an ICRC-supported) hospital has received dozens of dead and wounded," the organisation said on Twitter without giving more details.
In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, the coalition called the strike a "legitimate military action" ...
Last Thursday, attacks on a hospital and a fish market in the strategic rebel-held port city of Hodeida killed at least 55 civilians and wounded 170, according to the ICRC.
Saudi
Coalition Attacks School Bus A Day After State Department Justifies
Airstrikes On Yemeni Towns
9
August, 2018
Though
we are no longer shocked at the callous and indiscriminate nature of
Saudi coalition attacks on Yemeni towns, we are surprised that major
US networks like CNN have actually decided to cover coalition war
crimes for a change.
Early
on Thursday a coalition air attack scored a
direct hit on a school bus packed with children as it drove through a
crowded market place.
The bus was struck as it was driving through a market in the rebel-held province of Saada, according to the Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV.
At least 43 people were killed and 63 injured in the strike, according to the Houthi-held health ministry.
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a hospital it supports in Saada had received 29 dead bodies of "mainly children" under 15 years of age, and 40 injured, including 30 children.
Some
of the images to come out of area hospitals currently treating the
wounded confirm that it's mostly children among the casualties.
Image
source: Ansar Allah Media Center cia CNN
International
media featured photographs of wounded children being treated in area
hospitals in the aftermath of the airstrike, which happened in
Dahyan, in the rebel-held north of Yemen; however, most of the images
of dead and wounded released by Yemeni media accounts are too graphic
and disturbing to show.
Aftermath
of the coalition school bus attack in Dahyan, in the rebel-held north
of Yemen. Image source: Reuters via The Guardian
Houthi media broadcast graphic footage appearing to show the dead bodies of children. Another video showed a young boy carrying a UNICEF backpack being escorted to a hospital, his face bloodied as medical staff tried to treat his injuries.
Witnesses that CNN spoke to said the attack could be heard from neighboring districts.
The Saudi-led coalition called the airstrike a "legitimate military operation," and a retaliation to a Houthi ballistic missile that targeted the kingdom's Jizan province on Wednesday night, according to Saudi Arabia's official news agency.
Grotesque, shameful, indignant. Blatant disregard for rules of war when bus carrying innocent school children is fair game for attack. #NotATargetaljazeera.com/news/2018/08/y…
We've
noted many times before that Saudi coalition war crimes in Yemen,
which have become a weekly if not almost daily occurrence, has for
years been met with mainstream media silence. For example as we
recently noted a study that found that in one
year, MSNBC covered 'Stormy
Daniels' 455 times and the 'War In Yemen' 0 times.
Both
the US and UK have since 2015 or prior, worked closely with Saudi and
Emirati forces in their Yemen campaign to defeat Shia Houthi forces,
which includes staffing
intelligence command centers to assist in targeting, as well as
providing aerial refueling for coalition jets.
It
is also primarily American and British military hardware that's
supplying the Saudi military machine.
Important to note, that this is not just a training role, but an active operational one within RSAF too and involves "mission planning".
Look at the level of integration between the UK and Saudi militaries. This is so much more than a matter of just arms sales. baesystems.com/en/our-company… pic.twitter.com/zzbnJHGJul
The
US has long tried to present its role in the conflict, which as
attempting to stave off humanitarian catastrophe in Al Hudaydah,
yet as NPR's Steve Inskeep confirmed while reporting
from Yemen earlier
this year the US military "has
provided targeting information, equipment and aircraft refueling to
the Saudi air campaign, which has been widely criticized for being
indiscriminate and killing civilians in places like hospitals,
funerals and homes."
In
early June the Wall
Street Journal characterized
the US role in the new operation as actually "deepening"
as US
intelligence will provide "information to fine-tune the list of
targets". While
this "deepening" role is supposedly to keep the UAE and
Saudis on good behavior, its really a propaganda move to give the
American role a fig leaf of "humanitarian" motives.
'
U.S. bombs. U.S. targeting. U.S. mid air support.
And we just bombed a SCHOOL BUS.
The Saudi/UAE/U.S. bombing campaign is getting more reckless, killing more civilians, and strengthening terrorists inside Yemen. We need to end this - NOW.
And we just bombed a SCHOOL BUS.
The Saudi/UAE/U.S. bombing campaign is getting more reckless, killing more civilians, and strengthening terrorists inside Yemen. We need to end this - NOW.
But
when entire school buses full of children are being taken out by the
Saudi coalition, which receives continuing assistance from US
intelligence and military officers, it is perhaps becoming
increasingly hard to keep up the charade.
The
incident comes a day after the State Department spokesperson said the
Saudi coalition's ongoing airstrikes on Yemen are legitimate and
justified.
But, NDAA still allows Pompeo to waive conditions on refueling for Saudi and the UAE pic.twitter.com/vWUNfSMLPF
Statement from Rep. Ro Khanna, D-CA: "The Saudi-led coalition intentionally targeted a bus full children on their way to school. The U.S must stop supporting these barbaric attacks. Now more than ever we must end our complicity in this slaughter."
In
response to early reports of a rising civilian death toll as a result
of Thursday's airstrike on the school bus and market place, the Saudi
Press Agency cited official coalition
spokesperson Turki al-Maliki as saying: "The
targeting that happened today in Saada province was a legal military
action to
target elements that planned and executed the targeting of civilians
in the city of Jizan last night, killing and wounding civilians."
The
next State Department press briefing is going to be interesting.
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