YEMEN’S AIRFORCE was accused yesterday of killing at least 85 civilian refugees in an escalation of an offensive against Shia rebels who are challenging the government of the Arab world’s poorest country.
Reports from Sa’ada region, the scene of heavy fighting between government forces and rebels, said most of those killed in Wednesday’s attack were women and children. News agencies quoted locals as saying 87 bodies were buried yesterday.
News of the killings followed repeated warnings from aid agencies that a month of fighting has created a serious crisis, with more than 100,000 displaced Yemenis living in camps in mountainous terrain with freezing night-time temperatures.
Aid workers and tribal sources reported seeing body parts and pools of blood where hundreds of people had taken shelter in a makeshift camp. “The bloodthirsty authorities have committed a new massacre,” said a rebel statement.
Independent website News Yemen reported: “An air raid hit them in the area when they were sleeping under trees and plastic awnings.” It said the air force later attacked the camp again.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government has accused Iranian figures, though not the Tehran government, of backing the Houthi rebels. The insurgents dismiss these charges as propaganda aimed at securing western support for a war that has waged intermittently for five years and which is mainly about local issues, such as underdevelopment, exacerbated by sectarian tensions.
Saudi Arabia openly backs Mr Saleh, one of the Arab world’s longest-serving leaders.
The Saudis, US and other western countries fear that a lawless state is becoming a haven for al-Qaeda fighters fleeing Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mr Saleh also faces a secessionist movement in the south of the country, the former South Yemen until reunification in 1990.
Other elements of Yemen’s chronic crisis are dwindling oil reserves, one of the world’s worst water shortages, massive use of the narcotic plant qat and a rapidly growing population of 23 million that is putting a huge strain on all resources.
The Yemeni army, which launched its offensive against the rebels in mid-August, said it delivered “heavy blows” in the past few days, and accused the Houthis of using civilians as human shields.
Air raids and artillery bombardments have become normal events in recent days. Earlier this week Human Rights Watch urged the government to “promptly and impartially investigate responsibility for any attacks on civilians”.
The government claims the rebels want to restore a Shia “imamate”, or state, that fell in the 1960s. Sectarian strife has worsened in recent years, partly as a response to the growing influence of government-backed extremist Salafi Muslims, Sunni fundamentalists who are inspired and backed by Saudi Arabia, and who consider Shia to be heretics. – (Guardian service)