Human Rights Watch: Airstrike on Camp Raises Grave Concerns

(Beirut) – The airstrikes by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that hit a displaced persons’ camp in northern Yemen on March 30, 2015, raised grave concerns about violations of the laws of war. The airstrikes killed at least 29 civilians and wounded 41, including 14 children and 11 women. They hit a medical facility at the camp, a local market, and a bridge, according to initial reports from the World Health Organization.

All government forces participating in the attack should impartially investigate whether there were violations of the laws of war and take appropriate action, Human Rights Watch said. The United States, by providing intelligence to the Saudi-led air campaign, shares the obligation to minimize harm to civilians and civilian property in the fighting.

“The deaths of so many civilians in a camp with no apparent military target heightens concerns about laws-of-war violations,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “All sides in Yemen’s conflict need to do what they can to avoid harming civilians.”

Sometime before 11 a.m. on March 30, one or more warplanes of unidentified nationalitystruck multiple sites at one of the three camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Mazraq, in Hajja governorate of northern Yemen, about six kilometers from the border with Saudi Arabia.

Khaled Mareh, one of the camp managers, told Human Rights Watch that at 10:50 a.m., as he was standing at the camp gate, an explosion knocked him back: “I first heard the sound of a distant plane, then the deafening explosion. I saw body parts scattered in front of me, charred bodies, torn tents, and a large amount of shrapnel that hit the gate and charred the cars.” He said he saw a second explosion hit a section of the camp about 500 meters away, which he later learned killed several children from the camp who were walking to school. From a distance, he saw a third explosion at the western gate of the camp, and a fourth that hit the market.

A local aid worker present at the time said that he saw one aircraft carry out a strike at the camp: “I saw the plane strike 500 meters from the International Organization for Migration office. It shook the building and rattled the windows.” The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator to Yemen, Johannes Van Der Klaauw, stated on March 31 that all the structures hit constituted civilian infrastructure.

Reuters reported that an aid worker said that a warplane had struck a truck at the gate to one of the camps carrying fighters from Ansar Allah, the Houthi armed wing. The Guardianreported that some aid workers believed the attack was targeting a nearby base for Houthi fighters, a claim that Human Rights Watch could not confirm. Even if several Houthi fighters or a military truck were present at the camp, the attack was still probably unlawfully indiscriminate or disproportionate, Human Rights Watch said.

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