Another Massacre in Yemen

[rowan]

This follows Saudi bombings of a school and charity organization in the improverished nation earlier this month, and various other attacks on weddings, schools & hospitals over the past couple of years or so. Now they say it's 'ISIS' - that ever ready, all-purpose, good-to-go alibi for all NATO & Saudi war crimes...

A suicide bomber killed at least 54 people when he drove a car bomb into a militia compound in Aden on Monday, the health ministry said, in one of the deadliest attacks claimed by Islamic State in the southern Yemeni port city.

The director general of Yemen's health ministry in Aden, al-Khader Laswar, told Reuters that at least 67 other people were wounded in the attack in the city's Mansoura district.

The militant Islamic State group said in a statement carried by its Amaq news agency one of its suicide bombers carried out the bombing.

"Around 60 dead in a martyrdom operation by a fighter from Islamic State targeting a recruitment center in Aden city," the statement said, without giving further details.

A security source said the attack targeted a school compound where conscripts of the Popular Committees, forces allied to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, were gathered for breakfast.

Witnesses said the suicide bomber entered the compound behind a truck that had brought breakfast for the conscripts, who had queued for the meal.

Ambulance sirens wailed throughout the morning as they ferried casualties to a hospital run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which was overwhelmed by the number of casualties. An MSF spokesperson said the hospital received at least 45 bodies and more than 60 wounded people.

Islamist militants, including Islamic State, have exploited an 18-month-old civil war between the Houthi movement and Hadi's supporters, attacking senior officials, religious figures, security forces and compounds of the Saudi-led Arab military coalition which supports Hadi.

Last month, the governor of the southern Yemeni city of Aden survived a car bomb attack targeting his convoy, the latest attempt on the city's top official.

Hadi's supporters, who accuse former President Ali Abdullah Saleh of using Islamist militants to target the internationally-recognized president, have launched a series of raids in recent weeks to try to stem the violence, seizing dozens of people suspected of involvement in attacks across the city.

In eastern Yemen, forces loyal to Hadi, backed by troops from the United Arab Emirates, drove members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from the city of Mukalla in a military operation in May.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen ... SKCN1140HJ

[rowan]

Unless I missed it, this went totally unreported on in the Western media:

Saudi planes also targeted a gas station and a power plant in multiple raids on the provinces of Sa’ada, Hajjah, and Amran.

Since Friday, Riyadh’s jets have hit the three northern provinces over 50 times, causing vast destruction and casualties. At least 11 people, including two children, died in a series of attacks on Sa’ada.

In another attack on Friday, nearly a dozen civilians, including two children, were killed and several others injured when Saudi military aircraft attacked various residential areas across the country.

Yemen has seen almost daily military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015, with internal sources putting the toll from the bloody aggression at about 10,000. The offensive was launched to crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement and their allies and restore power to the resigned Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/08/27 ... fteen-dead

[rowan]

Shocking

The death toll in Yemen's 18-month-old civil war stands at about 10,000, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator says, an increase from estimates of more than 6000 cited by officials and aid workers for much of 2016.

Jamie McGoldrick told a new conference in the Yemeni capital that the new figure was based on official information provided by medical facilities in Yemen.

He said he believed the toll might be even higher since some areas had no medical facilities, and relatives there often buried loved ones directly.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/la ... 0736418376

[Sandydragon]

I agree its shocking. Any indiscriminate military action should be condemned if the militaries involved haven't taken sufficient care to protect non-combatants. With 3 sides to this conflict, it would be interesting to find which casualties were attributed to whom.

But why is it so shocking in this instance? The government of Yemen appealed for help and received military aid form a variety of sources, including the US and UK, and of cause the Saudis. On the other side of the coin, Iran is alleged to be helping many of the rebels but they don't receive the same scorn as the Saudis. Why not?

Equally, if its OK for Assad to indiscriminately bomb his populace into submission, and the Russians to help him, as he is the 'lawful government' why is the Yemeni government being held to a different standard?

Is this more a reflection of people's wider allegiance towards the supporting cast as opposed to the facts on the ground?

[rowan]

In fact, most of the bombings have been carried out by the Saudis - on schools, on weddings, on charity organizations, and on hospitals, as you full well know, and this with the support and co-operation of the Americans and the British. But you talk of the Yemeni government, Iran and even bring Syria into it, because you have been brainwashed into a state of extreme hypocrisy. So the real question is, why has this not attracted any comment on the barbaric and murderous activities of medieval monocracy which executes gays and poets and deprives women of their most fundamental rights? Why, because Saudi Arabia is the friend of America and Britain, even as it spawns and fully supports the Wahhabist terrorists given various acronyms by the Western media.

[rowan]

As usual, legendary Aussie journo John Pilger says it best:



& this from Britain's own press:

After repeated claims that Britain’s reloading of the Saudi Arabian Royal Air Force’s bomb bays does not mean Britain is at war with Yemen – where its ordnance are dropped – the Government has finally conceded that it is.

In a tense exchange with parliamentarians in a debate on the British sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, Alan Duncan, the government’s Special Envoy to Yemen, said: “We are in conflict for a reason”.

Duncan’s admission officially confirms of what every sensible person has known since March 2015, when Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen’s civil war with an air campaign made possible by British planes and British bombs, and for which UK arms companies made £2.8bn in revenues in the first year alone.

To use the words of the UN envoy to Yemen, the “humanitarian catastrophe” precipitated by the Arab world’s richest country bombing its poorest has been almost total.

Yemen is a country on the brink of famine, a nation where 80 per cent of its people need humanitarian assistance. Unknown thousands have died, mostly civilians and mostly by UK-equipped Saudi planes. Human development has been put back decades.

Continues here: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gov ... 72256.html

[rowan]

[Sandydragon]

In fact, most of the bombings have been carried out by the Saudis - on schools, on weddings, on charity organizations, and on hospitals, as you full well know, and this with the support and co-operation of the Americans and the British. But you talk of the Yemeni government, Iran and even bring Syria into it, because you have been brainwashed into a state of extreme hypocrisy. So the real question is, why has this not attracted any comment on the barbaric and murderous activities of medieval monocracy which executes gays and poets and deprives women of their most fundamental rights? Why, because Saudi Arabia is the friend of America and Britain, even as it spawns and fully supports the Wahhabist terrorists given various acronyms by the Western media.

Brain washed. Right oh. Physician heal thy self.

[rowan]

The almost weekly slaughter of civilians by the US-backed Saudi coalition in impoverished Yemen continues...

At least nine civilians, including four children, were killed on Thursday in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition on a residential building north of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, residents said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen ... SKCN11E1J4

[rowan]

& just a day after British Prime Minister Theresa May defended UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia:



https://www.rt.com/uk/358662-yemen-crimes-theresa-may

[Sandydragon]

Hang on, isn't this the legitimate government asking for help with their sacred duty to defend their country from bandits influenced by outsiders?

Amazing that one can be so quick to absolve the Assad regime an Russia and yet ignore the actions of outside players, like Iran, in Yemen.

The targeting of non-combatants is a war crime and the Saudis should be less indiscriminate. But perhaps when they use chemical weapons we can really put them on the same level as Assad?

[morepork]

christonabike.jpg

[rowan]

Hang on, isn't this the legitimate government asking for help with their sacred duty to defend their country from bandits influenced by outsiders? Amazing that one can be so quick to absolve the Assad regime an Russia and yet ignore the actions of outside players, like Iran, in Yemen.


So your first response to this war crime is of a defensive nature, and it took you a while to get around to it too. But the legitimate government you speak so fondly of was removed by a coup - and your comments elsewhere in defence of the current regime in Ukraine would indicate that you consider coups an acceptable way to seize power. So by comparing apples and oranges you haven't justified anything, but rather entangled yourself in a web of hypocrisy.


The targeting of non-combatants is a war crime and the Saudis should be less indiscriminate. But perhaps when they use chemical weapons we can really put them on the same level as Assad?

& yet the evidence does not point to Assad. It points to NATO. Meanwhile, you continue to ignore the fact NATO and its allies began the war in Syria by sending in fully-armed rebels who quickly turned to terrorism, and were dubbed ISIS by the Western media and thereafter blamed for every terrorist attack on the planet. Meanwhile, even as we speak the US has 500 troops stationed in Syria (unnvited), NATO member Turkey is actively invading (uninvited) and Israel is beginning to demolish homes in the illegally occupied Golan Heights.

So attempting to smokescreen Saudi's latest war crime against children - with weapons supplied by the US & UK - hasn't really been any more effective than your ludicrous apples-to-oranges comparisons. Why so defensive? I wonder. Why turn everything into some kind of competition? Why try and find ways to condemn NATO's enemies every time a NATO member or one of its closest allies commits another war crime?

[Donny osmond]

Muslims killing muslims. Its a tragedy, but what can we do?

[rowan]

Stop selling arms to them, for one thing. But America has been bombing Yemen since long before the current conflict began, and is actively involved in the current campaign as well.

[rowan]

2 stories in the press this morning:

Saudi-led coalition air strikes have killed 20 civilians in a rebel-held port city in Yemen, a government official said in a rare admission of a possible "error" by the alliance. The strikes came as Riyadh faces mounting international scrutiny over civilian casualties in its 18-month campaign against rebels in Yemen.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016 ... yemen-port

The U.S. Senate cleared the way for a $1.15 billion sale of tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, defending a frequent partner in the Middle East recently subject to harsh criticism in Congress. The Senate voted 71 to 27 to kill legislation that would have stopped the sale.

http://www.businessinsider.com/senate-c ... bia-2016-9

[WaspInWales]

2 stories in the press this morning

Saudi-led coalition air strikes have killed 20 civilians...

The U.S. Senate cleared the way for a $1.15 billion sale of tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia...

Don't forget Mary leaving GBBO but Paul staying!

Main story on the Beeb.

[kk67]

2 stories in the press this morning

Saudi-led coalition air strikes have killed 20 civilians...

The U.S. Senate cleared the way for a $1.15 billion sale of tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia...

Don't forget Mary leaving GBBO but Paul staying!

Main story on the Beeb.

There's at least 10 different articles about Brangelina in the Fail.

[WaspInWales]

There's at least 10 different articles about Brangelina in the Fail.

What's the latest KK?

[morepork]

There's at least 10 different articles about Brangelina in the Fail.

What's the latest KK?

Brad is upset at finding out his wife had been pegging Len, the babysitter with tiny hands.

[kk67]

There's at least 10 different articles about Brangelina in the Fail.

What's the latest KK?

Brad is blaming Angie's 'coven' of female staff for poisoning her against him.
Fairly standard complaint from most husbands who are struggling to understand what went wrong. But you know what they say about paranoia.....it doesn't necessarily mean the b'stards aren't trying to get you.

[rowan]

& now the famine sets in

Dozens of emaciated children are fighting for their lives in Yemen’s hospital wards, as fears grow that civil war and a sea blockade that has lasted for months are creating famine conditions in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country.

The UN’s humanitarian aid chief, Stephen O’Brien, described a visit to meet “very small children affected by malnutrition” in the Red Sea city of Hodeida. “It is of course absolutely devastating when you see such terrible malnutrition,” he said on Tuesday, warning of “very severe needs”.


What is happening in Yemen and how Saudi Arabia's airstrikes are affecting civilians - explainer
Read more
More than half of Yemen’s 28 million people are already short of food, the UN has said, and children are particularly badly hit, with hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation.

There are 370,000 children enduring severe malnutrition that weakens their immune system, according to Unicef, and 1.5 million are going hungry. Food shortages are a long-term problem, but they have got worse in recent months. Half of children under five are stunted because of chronic malnutrition.

A sea blockade on rebel-held areas enforced by the Saudi-coalition supporting the president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, stops shipments reaching most ports.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... n-hospital

[rowan]

& again...

An air strike by the Saudi-led coalition on mourners in Sanaa on Saturday (Oct 8) killed at least 82 people, the acting health minister in the Houthi-led administration in the Yemeni capital said.

Ghazi Ismail told a news conference in Sanaa the number of people wounded in the attack was 534.

http://www.straitstimes.com/world/middl ... h-ministry

[rowan]

Death toll up to 140 now. Another blatant war crime by US-backed Saudi which the UN and Western media will mostly ignore. So just keep talking about the Trump charade everyone...

[rowan]

Good article on it here. As everyone was talking about trump, Saudi massacred 140 civilians and injured around 500 more in impoverished Yemen with weapons supplied by guess who. The BBC apparently gave this 25 seconds coverage

FROM THE START of the hideous Saudi bombing campaign against Yemen 18 months ago, two countries have played active, vital roles in enabling the carnage: the U.S. and U.K. The atrocities committed by the Saudis would have been impossible without their steadfast, aggressive support.

The Obama administration “has offered to sell $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia over its eight years in office, more than any previous U.S. administration,” as The Guardian reported this week, and also provides extensive surveillance technology. As The Intercept documented in April, “In his first five years as president, Obama sold $30 billion more in weapons than President Bush did during his entire eight years as commander in chief.”

Most important, according to the Saudi foreign minister, although it is the Saudis who have ultimate authority to choose targets, “British and American military officials are in the command and control center for Saudi airstrikes on Yemen” and “have access to lists of targets.” In sum, while this bombing campaign is invariably described in Western media outlets as “Saudi-led,” the U.S. and U.K. are both central, indispensable participants. As the New York Times editorial page put it in August: “The United States is complicit in this carnage,” while The Guardian editorialized that “Britain bears much responsibility for this suffering.”

From the start, the U.S.- and U.K.-backed Saudis have indiscriminately and at times deliberately bombed civilians, killing thousands of innocent people. From Yemen, Iona Craig and Alex Potter have reported extensively for The Intercept on the widespread civilian deaths caused by this bombing campaign. As the Saudis continued to recklessly and intentionally bomb civilians, the American and British weapons kept pouring into Riyadh, ensuring that the civilian massacres continued. Every once and awhile, when a particularly gruesome mass killing made its way into the news, Obama and various British officials would issue cursory, obligatory statements expressing “concern,” then go right back to fueling the attacks.

This weekend, as American attention was devoted almost exclusively to Donald Trump, one of the most revolting massacres took place. On Saturday, warplanes attacked a funeral gathering in Sana, repeatedly bombing the hall where it took place, killing over 100 people and wounding more than 500 (see photo above). Video shows just some of the destruction and carnage:



https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/u-s ... civilians/