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Incident on 30 March 2015 [+] Print this page

Location: Al-Mazrak IDP Camp, Hajjah Governorate [+]

Country: Yemen [+]

Violation types: Violation of international humanitarian law [+]

Location


This incident took place in Al-Mazrak IDP Camp, Hajjah Governorate, Yemen [+]

Description


According to the Panel of Experts on Yemen: "137. The Panel documented that the coalition had conducted air strikes targeting civilians and civilian objects, in violation of international humanitarian law, including camps for internally displaced persons and refugees; civilian gatherings, including weddings; civilian vehicles, including buses; civilian residential areas; medical facilities; schools; mosques; markets, factories and food storage warehouses; and other essential civilian infrastructure, such as the airport in Sana ’a, the port in Hudaydah and domestic transit routes (see annexes 52, 54 and 61). 138. The Panel documented 119 coalition sorties relating to violations of international humanitarian law. Many attacks involved multiple air strikes on multiple civilian objects. Of the 119 sorties, the Panel identified 146 targeted objects(see annex 47). [...] On Monday, 30 March 2015, either a short time before or at approximately 11.00am, at least 45 refugees and IDPs were killed and over 200 displaced civilians injured from an air strike on AlMazrak camp near the border with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A few days preceding the attack, five hundred families had arrived at the camp near the northern town of Harad. The civilians in the camp were newly arrived, having fled recently from militia fighting and air strikes in Sada’a. An NGO staff member told the Panel that before the air strikes, there had not been any fighting close to the camp. The Camp’s entrance, clinic, food area, and administrative centre were destroyed during the air strikes. An NGO stated that it had treated 34 injured people at its hospital in Harad, and that 29 others had been pronounced dead upon arrival. On 31 March 2015, in response to the attack, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator to Yemen advised that all the structures that had been hit within the IDP Camp, constituted civilian infrastructure. A statement from Yemen’s Defence Ministry in respect to the attack advised that, “Saudi warplanes targeted one of four refugee camps in the Harad district, which led to the death and injury of several of its residents. The air strike targeted camp 1 in the Mazraq region, which houses around 4,000 refugees, leaving over 40 people dead – including women and children – and over 250 others injured.”" [+]

Perpetrator units

Name Other Names Classification
Operation Decisive Storm [+] Firmness Storm
Operation Storm of Resolve
Resolve Storm
operation Asifat al-Hazm
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
26 January 2016 United Nations Letter dated 22 January 2016 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2140 (2014) addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/2018/192) 08 October 2019