Saudi attack on Somali refugee boat likely war crime: HRW

YemenExtra

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says a recent deadly aerial aggression on a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen, “apparently” carried out by the Saudi-led military coalition, likely amounts to “war crime.”

HRW a statement released by the HRW on Sunday, at least 32 people lost their lives and nearly 30 others were injured after an apparent Saudi airstrike hit a boat, crammed with 145 Somali refugees, near Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea on the evening of March 16.

“The coalition’s apparent firing on a boat filled with fleeing refugees is only the latest likely war crime in Yemen’s two-year-long war,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at the HRW, adding that “reckless disregard for the lives of civilians has reached a new level of depravity.

the statement quoted a young survived Somali refugee as saying ” “All of a sudden, I saw a helicopter above us. … They attacked abruptly. … When they kept firing at us, those of us who spoke Arabic kept saying, ‘We are Somalis!’

The refugees had departed from Hudaydah to Sudan when they came under Saudi fire.