“In response to the escalation of aggression and the continuation of its crimes and siege, our armed forces carried out " the eighth Balance of Deterrence" operation by bombing a number of military and vital targets belonging to the Saudi enemy,” the spokesman of Yemen’s Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Saree said.
Saree said that 14 domestically-developed combat drones had been used in the operations.
“Four Sammad-3 (Invincible-3) drones bombed the King Khaled airbase near capital Riyadh and four Sammad-2 (Invincible-2) drones also bombed military targets at King Abdullah International Airport in Jeddah and Aramco Jeddah refineries,” he explained.
Various human rights organizations have accused Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, of human rights violations and some have gone as far as accusing the coalition of war crimes. The majority of these accusations stem from airstrikes undertaken by the coalition, but others, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, have also criticized the coalition's approach to blockades. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food said that the deliberate starvation of civilians in both international and internal armed conflict may constitute a war crime, and could also constitute a crime against humanity in the event of deliberate denial of food and also the deprivation of food sources or supplies.
A 2019 United Nations report said the US, UK, and France may be complicit in committing war crimes in Yemen by selling weapons and providing other support to the Saudi-led coalition which is using the deliberate starvation of civilians as a tactic of warfare.
The Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign has so far killed or injured an estimated 18,588 civilians as of May 2021 according to the Yemen Data Project. (ILKHA)