There is little media interest here in the latest killings of civilians, despite Britain’s ‘routine’ involvement, reports Mike Phipps.

Scores of civilians have reportedly been killed and wounded by the latest US airstrikes on Yemen, as the Trump administration continues its weeks-long intensification of attacks targeting Houthi rebels in the country. The bombardment included a strike on a popular market in the capital Sanaa that killed 12 people and wounded 30 others.

US airstrikes on Yemen’s Ras Isa oil port also killed at least 80 people and injured 150 in what is one of the deadliest attacks on the country by US forces, according to the Houthi rebels who are in control of the territory, reports Al Jazeera.

There were a large number of civilian casualties, according to reports. Paramedics and rescue workers who rushed to the scene were killed in subsequent strikes, known as ‘double taps’ in military parlance. As previously reported on Labour Hub, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe says such attacks are a violation of international law – yet they are widely used by the US.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “gravely concerned about the airstrikes.” The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said the attack on the port “raises serious concerns of grave violations of international humanitarian law, potentially amounting to war crimes.”

The US began its new offensive against Yemen last month when Trump ordered the military to “launch decisive and powerful” action against the Houthis in response to their naval blockade targeting Israeli ships traversing Yemen’s waterways. The attacks expose the hypocrisy of a president who claims to pose as a global peacemaker. The US strikes have hit more than forty locations and killed 25 civilians in the first week alone.

International human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations official Craig Mokhiber argued that the US “is bombing Yemen because Yemen is acting, as required by international law, to stop the genocide and unlawful siege in Palestine.”

One strike on March 24^th reduced the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Saada to rubble, completing the work of thirteen earlier airstrikes. The Anti-Cancer Fund, a government body, condemned the attack as a “grave and brutal” act and said it constituted a war crime. Moreover, it was part of a pattern of repeated strikes on healthcare facilities by the US – and not just in Yemen.

Last month also marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the onslaught by a coalition of countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, against Yemen and its people. Bombardment of the country by the Saudi-led coalition has utterly devastated its infrastructure, while a blockade imposed by the coalition of aggressors has resulted in increasingly widespread starvation and the choking-off from Yemen of essential medical supplies and vital humanitarian aid.

During the first Trump presidency, there were over 200 air and ground strikes, by the US directly, with around a tenth of all actions leading to the deaths of between 86 and 154 civilians, according to Airwars, which monitors military action in a number of conflict zones.

The ten-year war has led to approaching 400,000 deaths – including at least 10,000 children. Around 9,000 civilians have been killed by the Western-backed coalition. Of those who have survived, an unparalleled one in two children are severely malnourished. UNICEF report that ports and roads in Yemen remained blockaded, preventing access to food and medicine.

Britain’s shameful role

The UK government bears a heavy responsibility for this state of affairs. It has supplied billions of pounds worth of fighter jets, bombs and missiles to the Saudi-led coalition for use in Yemen. It decided to resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia in 2020 despite the Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s earlier successful judicial review against it in 2019. As Jeremy Corbyn MP said in 2021: “The UK government is complicit in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, through its arming, training, and support for the Saudi-led coalition.”

Last year, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, without consulting Parliament, joined the US in its direct bombardment of Yemen. The strikes continued until May 2024, supported by the then Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer, but opposed by some Labour backbenchers, including John McDonnell MP.

The UK has not participated directly in the latest US strikes but it has provided ‘routine’ refuelling support for the US. The US strikes are continuing on a daily basis, although there appears to be little interest in the UK media.  

Image: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/02/26/yemens-houthis-report-first-civilian-death-in-us-uk-strikes  2024 (AP pic) Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0 Deed

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.