25 Civilians, Many Children Killed in Saudi Attack on North Yemen Party

UN wants probe into mounting civilian deaths

Reports of a Saudi airstrike against Yemen’s northern Jawf Province are fueling a new round of calls for probes because of the mounting civilian death toll, as attacks are worryingly common, and have little apparent military purpose.

Wednesday’s Jawf attack turned out to hit a circumcision party, destroying three homes and killing 25 civilians, most of them children. Clearly, there was no military dimension to this party, and the Saudis have offered no insight on why they attacked.

This was the deadliest in of a series of attacks by the Saudis in north Yemen over the past week, all of them killing civilians and none of them hitting anything but homes full of people.

The Saudis have not commented on the attack, and that’s not unusual, as they’ve been successfully avoiding UN accountability for years. Calls for a UN probe in the past have tended to end with agreements to let the Saudis investigate themselves.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.