A UN panel said Wednesday that at least 18,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed or wounded since the US-backed Saudi-led coalition intervened in the country in 2015.
In a report presented at the UN Human Rights Council, UN experts said the people of Yemen have faced about 10 airstrikes a day, a total of more than 23,000 since 2015. According to The Associated Press, the report cited the Yemen Data Project, which attributed every airstrike to the US-Saudi coalition since the Houthis have no air force.
According to the Yemen Data Project, in 23,351 coalition air raids, 8,773 civilians have been killed, and another 9,843 have been wounded.
Since the US first backed Saudi Arabia in Yemen in March 2015, the coalition has dropped bombs on schools, farms, water treatment facilities, marketplaces, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure. On top of the vicious air campaign, the coalition has enforced a blockade on Yemen and is still blocking fuel shipments from entering the country.
At the end of 2020, the UN estimated 233,000 people have died in Yemen due to the war. About 100,000 died directly in violence, and over 100,000 have died due to starvation and disease caused by the coalition’s siege tactics. These numbers are a conservative estimate, and the UN has also warned in 2021 alone, 400,000 Yemeni children under the age of five will starve to death if conditions don’t change.
Despite the grim warnings and President Biden’s pledge to end support for Saudi Arabia’s “offensive” operations in Yemen, the war is still raging. Biden made his pledge in February, and it was revealed in April that the US is still servicing Saudi warplanes that are bombing Yemen. Without this assistance, the Saudi air force would be quickly grounded.