The Saudi mission to the UN said Sunday that the Kingdom-led coalition “greatly regrets civilian casualties in Yemen” during the air raids carried out by the coalition.
The mission added in a statement released on their Twitter account that the Saudi-led coalition is investigating those incidents and working on improving its target precision.
”The Arab coalition announces the formation of a high-level independent committee … to evaluate the events, identification, and target mechanisms and their development,” the Saudi mission’s statement said.
A UN report said that the Saudi-led coalition targeted civilians and documented 119 raids that may violate international law.
Saudi-coalition spokesperson Ahmed Al-Asiery said that US and British experts are advising collation troops on how to improve accuracy of air raids and limiting the deaths of civilians. These experts held workshops over the last few days in the coalition headquarters.
Civilians are suffering a result of the military conflict, according to a UN report issued early January. Nearly 2,800 were killed amid continued Saudi-coalition airstrikes and Houthis artillery strikes. Meanwhile the humanitarian conditions in the city of Taiz worsened as the siege on the city continues.
“We are still unable to fully send aid to the city [of Taiz] due to the siege but there are ongoing talks with parties involved in the conflict, the UN, and the Yemeni government to resolve the situation,” Foreign Relations Director at the UN Human Affairs Office for the MENA Region Iyad Nasr told Daily News Egypt. “Since the beginning of this conflict, many citizens moved [to Taiz], fleeing from the turbulent situation in the capital Sana’a, and other Yemeni cities; yet they witnessed the same fate.”
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) earlier announced a delivery of medical supplies to the besieged city. This was the first time in five months that Taiz received medical supplies. Taiz formerly had 20 hospitals to treat its population of 600,000 people. Now only six hospitals are partially functioning and basic healthcare is mainly provided by medical staff in people’s homes, according to MSF.
Meanwhile Al-Qaeda militants seized the city of Azzan, in Shabwa province, residents told media. Al-Qaeda in Yemen is using the vacuum caused by the clashes in the country to expand in some Yemeni locations.
Since March, Saudi Arabia started a military operation to restore “the legitimacy” of President Mansour Hadi, after Iran-backed Houthis seized the capital of Sana’
