Jon Queally / Common Dreams & The Humanist Report – 2018-08-29 00:49:25
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/25/less-24-hours-after-senate-rejected-effort-curb-slaughter-26-more-children-killed-us
Less Than 24 Hours After Senate Rejected
Effort to Curb Slaughter, 26 More Children
Killed by US-Backed Bombing in Yemen
Jon Queally / Common Dreams
Yemenis carrying the bodies of children killed in a Saudi-led airstrike near Al Hudaydah on Thursday.
(Credit: EPA, via Shutterstock)
“Yesterday, 26 children were reportedly killed in attacks in ad-Durayhimi, Yemen. Children and families continue to be victims of intense and senseless violence. UNICEF calls on all parties to the conflict to stop the war on children in Yemen once and for all.” #ChildrenUnderAttack
— UNICEF
“The US must end its complicity in the Saudi-led onslaught in #Yemen. We’re helping intensify the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The worst #Cholera outbreak in human history. It has to stop.” #YemenCantWait
— Friends Committee on National Legislation
“It’s just unthinkable to me that we continue to willingly participate in the slaughter of Yemeni kids when there is zero benefit to US security.”
— Sen. Chris Murphy
“Shame on those Senators who let our
involvement in this war continue.
History will not be kind to you.”
— Win Without War
(August 25, 2018) — Less than a day after Republicans in the United States Senate rejected a chance this week “to slam on the brakes and stop [America’s] role in enabling the suffering in Yemen,” at least 26 more children were slaughtered by a US-backed Saudi-led bombing in the western part of the country.
Condemning the bombing near the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah that occurred Thursday, but was not widely reported until Friday, the United Nation’s humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, and head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, said the attack — in which four women, in addition to the children, were killed — took place as the victims tried to flee the area.
“This is the second time in two weeks that an airstrike by the Saudi-led Coalition has resulted in dozens of civilian casualties,” said Lowcock, who noted that “an additional air strike in Al Durayhimi on Thursday resulted in the death of four children.”
As the New York Times reports:
Criticism of Saudi Arabia and its partners has been growing over thousands of civilian casualties, many of them caused by munitions fired from the coalition’s warplanes.
Humanitarian groups and antiwar activists have also aimed criticism at the United States, a main provider of the Saudi coalition’s weapons, intelligence, warplane refueling and guidance technology for missiles and bombs.
Just two weeks ago, as Common Dreams reported, another Saudi airstrike in the city of Saada — which investigators later showed was carried out using US-manufactured bombs — killed at least 40 children riding in a school bus as they enjoyed a rare field trip. In reaction to that massacre, an outraged Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) declared, in all capital letters, “We just bombed a SCHOOL BUS.”
“I had hoped that the outrage that followed the Saada attack in Yemen two weeks ago would be a turning point in the conflict. Yesterday’s reported attacks in Al-Durayhimi, killing 26 children, indicate that it was not,” said Fore of UNICEF on Friday.
“These deaths are on our hands, and many more children will die in Yemen as long as the US supports the Saudi-led war,” declared the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the anti-war Quaker advocacy group, in a tweet.
It was the August 9th slaughter of the school children on the bus in Saada that drove Sen. Murphy on Wednesday of this week to push for a vote on his amendment that would have “cut off United States’ support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s war in Yemen until the Secretary of Defense certified that the coalition’s air campaign is not violating international law and US policy related to the protection of civilians.” But Republicans, led by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, objected to the measure and would not allow a vote.
Less than twenty-four hours later, more than two-dozen innocent children were dead.
As the peace advocacy group Win Without War put it: “Shame on those Senators who let our involvement in this war continue. History will not be kind to you.”
* * *
Comments from Sen. Chris Murphy
“There’s no way a school bus is a legitimate military target. That school bus was carrying dozens of children — dozens of children that are now dead because of a 500-pound bomb made in the United States and sold to the coalition . . . .
“At some point we need to believe our eyes rather than the reports we get from the administration that the targeting is getting better.” [The] “problem is [that the coalition’s] targets are [a] school bus, funerals, water treatment facilities . . . .
“The fact of the matter is the majority of the civilian casualties are caused by the side that we are supporting . . . .
“The campaign is not expediting a political end. It is prolonging the misery and giving more opportunity for our mortal enemies there, the terrorist groups to get stronger and stronger . . . .
“We are radicalizing a generation of Yemeni children against us and that will have implications for US National security for years to come.”
CNN Reports on US Bomb That KiIIed 40 Yemeni Children:
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The Humanist Report
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