Military Media Publishes Video of US while Refueling Saudi Warplanes in Yemen

YemenExtra

Y.A

As Saudi Arabia continues its deadly aerial attacks on Yemen, a video has surfaced in media that purportedly shows an American aircraft providing aerial refueling for Saudi warplanes.

The scenes demonstrate the direct American participation in the campaign against Yemen, and also highlights the nature of the American involvement in killing civilians in Yemen.

Washington has announced more than once the participation of its aircraft to provide fuel to fighter jets of the US-Saudi campaign, and the US is collecting information and locating targets bombed by the coalition.

The footage emerged hot on the heels of two attacks by the coalition, which killed scores of civilians, mostly children.

Thirty-one civilians, including 22 children and four women, lost their lives in a strike hitting a vehicle in the Durayhimi city in Yemen’s coastal al-Hudaydah Province on Thursday.

Back on August 9, Saudi-led warplanes hit a school bus in the town of Dhahyan in Yemen’s northern province of Sa’ada, killing a total of 51 people, among them 40 children, and leaving nearly 80 others wounded.

Munitions experts have confirmed that the bomb used in the attack had been supplied by the US. The experts told CNN earlier in the month that the bomb was a 227-kilogram laser-guided Mark 82 bomb.

Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday that the investigation into the war crimes in Yemen by Saudi Arabia has lacked credibility and has failed to provide correct the targeting of civilian victims.

The organization stressed that US logistical support for coalition raids in Yemen could make Washington complicit, explaining that “there is no credibility to the investigation of the coalition.”

The continuation of the coalition’s illegal air strikes and the failure to adequately investigate alleged violations expose arms suppliers to the coalition – including the United States, the United Kingdom and France – to the risk of involvement in future illegal attacks. These countries should immediately suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, noting that “in September 2018, UN member states should support the renewal and strengthening of the UN Human Rights Council’s panel of Experts on Yemen that urged the International Criminal Court,” the organization added.

The United States has provided billions of dollars in arms sales to countries participating in the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting a war in Yemen against the Yemeni joint forces  and contributing to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Oona Hathaway, Director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School, wrote in a report, in cooperation with a number of Yale Law School students, in Just Security website.