Araweelo News Network
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is moving to distance itself from the mounting civilian casualties in Yemen’s civil war, while simultaneously providing targeting assistance to a Saudi Arabian-led coalition that has been conducting airstrikes over Yemen for the past six months.
United Nations officials say the coalition is responsible for the majority of the country’s civilian deaths, which recently surpassed 2,300.
Last Saturday, airstrikes targeting Taiz, a city about 170 miles south of the capital, killed over 130 people attending a wedding. Yemen’s International Red Crescent Society reported that two of its volunteers, Qaed Faisal, 28, and Omar Fareh, 31, were killed by the shelling in a neighboring area on the same day.
Riyadh’s bombing campaign began in March, as Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled the country under assault from a Shiite Houthi insurgency. The U.S., eager to prevent the impoverished country from falling under control of al Qaeda fighters there, has backed the Saudi Arabian effort to restore Hadi’s rule.
But human rights groups accused the Saudi coalition of conducting indiscriminate airstrikes and unnecessarily endangering the civilian population. The International Red Crescent Society has already lost eight staff members and volunteers from the shelling.