Coalition buys unknown-source cluster bombs to escape legal liabilities

SANAA, Jan. 31 (YPA) – Acting Minister of Human Rights Ali Al-Dailami said on Sunday that the United Nations requires and impedes cooperation to complete the file of removing the internationally banned cluster bombs.

Al-Dailami pointed out that the cluster bombs are only part of internationally prohibited weapons that are used in the aggressive war on Yemen.

He noted that it is not unlikely that there was intentionality by the Saudi-led coalition countries to buy illegal weapons of unknown source to escape the legal liabilities.

Director General of the Yemen Executive Mine Action Centre (YEMAC), Ali Sofra, said that the center is dealing with a new type of cluster bombs, stressing that the United Nations has not provided the materials for destroying these catastrophic waste.

Safra pointed out that the statistics of cluster bombs discovered in separate areas of the country amounted to 3,179 cluster bombs, and that the civilian casualties exceeded 1,000, mostly women and children, and most of them in agricultural and grazing areas.

The center has accurate statistics and there are eight types of cluster bombs that have been used in Yemen and were made by the United States, Britain, and Brazil, Sofra added.

He explained that there are 13 types of cluster bombs that do not carry any data for their manufacture and were thrown on several areas, such as the ones dropped on Al-Jar farms in Hajjah province.

The cluster bombs attacks concentrated in nine provinces, which are Saada, Hajjah, the capital Sanaa, Hodeida, Jawf, Amran, Mahweet, Dhamar and Taiz, according to YEMAC’s director.

”Our statistics were not based on a comprehensive field survey, but rather from what could be reached in the targeted areas as a result of the continuing war,” Sofra said.

YPA