The Voice of Ummah: Three children have been martyred and 17 people injured after Saudi warplanes bombed homes in Yemen’s Dhamar province with internationally banned cluster bombs. According to the Yemeni News Agency Saba, the attack hit the villages of Al-Arri and Barza’a in the Qaa Al-Haql area of Dhoran Anss district.
Saba said the injured include seven children and three women, one of whom was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage as a result of the attack. The cluster munitions damaged three homes, destroyed a farm’s solar power system and killed or injured a number of livestock.
Cluster bombs: a lasting threat to children
The Entesaf Organization for Women and Children’s Rights condemned the attack, saying the use of cluster munitions in populated areas poses an immediate threat to civilians and leaves unexploded ordnance that endangers residents, particularly children, long after the attacks end. The group also cited a Saudi airstrike on a health centre in the Al-Mashawala area of Taiz’s Al-Wazi’iyah district that killed one civilian and injured a woman, and the wounding of three African migrants by Saudi fire in the border districts of Baqim and Munabbih in Saada. The absence of investigations and accountability, it warned, encourages further violations.
Read More: Yemeni Missiles Hit Saudi Command HQ at Aden’s Badr Camp
Yemeni Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said on Friday that Saudi forces carried out 101 airstrikes and missile attacks in 24 hours on the capital Sanaa and the governorates of Dhale, Taiz, Hodeidah, Dhamar, Marib, Saada, Jawf, Amran and Lahj. He said F-15 and Typhoon jets took off from the Khamis Mushait and Taif bases, while missiles were fired from Najran, killing and injuring civilians, including women and children.
114 martyred, 305 injured; over 18 million face severe hunger
The Health Ministry in Sanaa said 114 people were martyred and 305 injured across 13 governorates in Saudi attacks between September 3 and October 15, with women and children making up the largest share of the casualties.
UN agencies are also documenting the scale of the catastrophe. The World Food Programme (WFP) says more than 18 million people in Yemen face severe hunger, more than 2 million young children are acutely malnourished, and fighting since September has uprooted more than 200,000 people. Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, the agency noted. The World Health Organization reports 8,034 suspected cholera cases and 27 deaths this year, a quarter of them in the past four weeks. UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mohamed Yahya told the Security Council that Yemen’s health system is close to collapse and that the humanitarian appeal is only 22 percent funded.
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