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Incident on 9 July 2015 [+] Print this page

Location: Mus’ab ben Omar school, Tuban District, Lahij Governorate [+]

Country: Yemen [+]

Violation types: Violation of International Law [+]

Location


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This incident took place in Mus’ab ben Omar school, Tuban District, Lahij Governorate, Yemen [+]

Description


According to Amnesty International: "VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIOAL LAW: HUNDREDS OF CIVILIANS KILLED IN COALITION AIRSTRIKES [...] Since 25 March 2015, thousands of airstrikes by Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians all over Yemen. The eight strikes investigated by Amnesty International for this briefing killed at least 141 civilians and injured 101, most of them children and women, in southern region of Yemen. While the scope of this briefing is limited to the specific geographic area of southern Yemen, Amnesty International has investigated civilian casualties resulting from unlawful coalition airstrikes in other parts of the country, notably in and around the capital, Sana’a, and the northern city of Sa’da, the most frequent target of such strikes. Coalition strikes which killed and injured civilians and destroyed civilian property and infrastructure investigated by Amnesty International have been found to be frequently disproportionate or indiscriminate. In some instances Amnesty International found that strikes appeared to have apparently directly targeted civilians or civilian objects. International humanitarian law prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and attacks which do not discriminate between civilians/civilian objects and combatants/military objectives, or which cause disproportionate harm to civilians/civilian objects in relation to the anticipated military advantage which may be gained by such attack. Such attacks constitute war crimes. The pattern of attacks, which since the beginning of the coalition air bombardment campaign on 25 March 2015 have continued to cause civilian casualties, and the lack of investigations to date into such incidents raise serious concerns about an apparent disregard for civilian life and for fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, not only by those planning and executing the strikes but also by the exiled Yemeni government, at whose behest Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces are acting. [...] On 9 July coalition forces killed 10 members of the Faraa family, including four children and five women, and injured 10 others when they bombed the Mus’ab ben Omar school where a dozen families displaced by the conflict were sheltering in Tahrur village, north of Aden in Lahj governorate on 9 July at about 1pm. The displaced people who were sheltering in the school are members of the “muhammashin” (marginalised) community – Yemeni citizens of African origins, one of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable communities in the country. Salama, who lost three daughters, Yusra, 21, Shadia, 19, and Naama, 20 months, in the bombing, told Amnesty International: “We came here to escape the war in Huta (a 1km west of Tahrur). We had nowhere else to go. We have nothing. How could I imagine that we were going to be killed here? My girls were killed and I wish I had died with them. I have nothing else in life”. Mehdi Salah Mohammed, a bus driver in the army, was based in Hodeida but has not worked since the beginning of the conflict after his commanding officer stopped reporting to work. To supplement his salary he would make deliveries with his motorcycle. Mehdi told Amnesty International that on 9 July he was out on an errand when an airstrike hit his home, killing his wife, Naama, a mother of seven, and whose 5-year-old daughter Rahma was seriously wounded, said: “We are just poor people and don’t have anything to do with anything. We have no relations with the Huthis. We fled our homes with nothing and when we tried to go back home to collect some of our clothes the Huthis didn’t even allow us to go. I lost my wife and now our seven children have no mother. What do I tell them? My wife’s sister and niece were killed and their children too are now orphans. May God help us.” Neighbours told Amnesty International that the last time they saw any Huthis was four days before the strike, when two Huthis passed by the school but did not stop. They said that before the airstrike Huthis used to stay in a school and nearby building in another part of the village, less than a kilometre away. However, that location was never targeted by coalition forces and neighbours said that Huthi/Saleh loyalists armed groups stopped gathering there after the strike on the Mus’ab Ben Omar school, which killed members of the Faraa family. Amnesty International found no evidence indicating that the Mus’ab Ben Omar school was being used for military purposes. All that was visible in the ruins of the school were remains of the meagre possessions of the displaced families who had been sheltering there – blankets, cooking pots, children’s clothes - as well as a fin of a bomb from the Mark 80 series US-designed general purpose bombs, similar to those found at many other locations of coalition strikes." [+]

Perpetrator units

Name Other Names Classification
Operation Restoring Hope [+] Arab Coalition
Arab Coalition Forces
Arab Coalition to restore legitimacy in Yemen
Gulf Arab coalition
Hope Restoration Operation
Joint Forces
Operation Renewal of Hope
Operation Storm of Resolve
Saudi-led Arab Coalition
Saudi-led Coalition
coalition forces
operations Renewal of Hope
Air Force [+]
Army [+]
Joint Operation [+]
Military [+]
Navy [+]

Sources

List of all sources used to evidence the data in this record Click the "+" symbol next to every data point in the record to see the sources used for that data point.

Publication Date Publisher Publication Title Access Date Archive Link
18 August 2015 Amnesty International Nowhere safe for civilians': Airstrikes and ground attacks in Yemen (Index MDE 31/2291/2015) 19 January 2021