Geneva, 29th of August 2017
The Gulf and Yemen Project
“Committee for Justice”, a human rights organization based in Geneva, said that “Houthi forces launched an indiscriminate attack on a residential quarter in the area of “Beir Basha” in the city of “Taiz”, which led to the death and injury of at least 10 civilians. This comes as a continuation of the non-stop indiscriminate attacks done by these militia groups”.
According to local sources, mortar and artillery shells were indiscriminately used in these attacks on residential areas that had no military presence.
CFJ added:“The United nations has to work on ending indiscriminate attacks systemically committed by Houthi forces on the city of “Taiz”, which has left dozens of civilians between injured and dead.
And according to the local sources that were communicated with by the organization, the Hauthi forces launched indiscriminate attacks using heavy artillery on the area of “Beir Basha” in the city of Taiz, the third largest city in Yemen, on Sunday evening, 27th of August 2017, which led to the death and injury of 10 civilians, whom the organization documented their names, presented below:
- Asil Nashwan Abdelgelil Mohamed Saeed, 19 years old – Dead.
- Yasser Abdelgelil Mohamed Saeed, 21 years old – Dead.
- Abdelhakim Ahmed Qaeed, 35 years old – critically injured.
- Abdelhakim Abdallah Sallam, 19 years old – injured.
- Shobaib Abdallah Aly, 22 years old – injured.
- Abubakr Talib Ahmed, child, 2 years old – injured in head and neck.
- Mostafa Abdelreheem, 32 years old – injured in face and chest.
- Mohannad Abdelsalam Aly, 16 years old – injured in right leg.
- Ehab Abdalla Aly, 32 years old – critically injured.
- Omar Ahmed Alazraq, 13 years old – critically injured.
Laws of war prohibit indiscriminate attacks, which are those that target military and civil objects or civilians, without distinction between them. It includes as well, the attacks that are not directed at a military target or those which use a weapon that cannot be directed specifically at a military target, as bombing of entire areas, using artillery or any other method which deals with various and different military targets, across an area populated with civilians and civil objects, as one military target.
Laws of war also require parties of a conflict to pay continuous attention during military operations, in order to exempt civilian population from harm, and to take “all possible precautions” to reduce incidental casualties on civilian lives and civil objects. These precautions include making every effort to verify that attack targets are military ones and not civilians or civil objects, and to provide “effective prior warning” of attacks whenever the circumstances permit this warning action.
Although “Taiz” is under control of Yemeni government since March 2016, nevertheless, the indiscriminate attacks done by Salih and Houthi’s Militia forces on residential areas haven’t stopped. On the contrary, in the last few months it became a sort of systematic operations, which is completely forbidden in accordance with laws of war, that are applied to the situation in Yemen.
The United nations and its various mechanisms working in Yemen have to put pressure on the conflict parties in Yemen to exclude civilians from their conflict, and not to discriminate in its field procedures.
“Committee for Justice” works on monitoring and documenting human rights violations with regards to the current ongoing war in Yemen through its project “The Gulf and Yemen project”, where it communicates with active local organizations in Yemen, and utilizes the data through communicating with the mechanisms of human rights protection in the United nations regarding the situation on the ground.
