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Yemen's northwestern city of Sa'ada is teaming with thousands in the streets as they mark 1,000 days of resistance against the Saudi-led war against their country.
Demonstrators condemned the most recent deadly airstrikes, one of which killed a dozen women returning home from a wedding procession in the Qaramesh region, another leaving 90 injured.
They also called on Arab states to withdraw support for the Saudi kingdom in light of the catastrophic effects the war has occasioned on the people of Yemen. Some held signs reading “Stop War on Yemen.” Others carried pictures of slain children.
The latest death toll, according to some estimates, exceeds 12,000. It comes amid an escalation in Saudi attacks with their well-serviced war machine financed by the United States, United Kingdom and France, which are all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
This gash in a basic tenet of democracy has summoned over 350 global figures to release a public statement urging the three arms suppliers to stop their sales to Riyadh. It cited the bellicose trio as being “major weapons suppliers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” hence, they “bear a special responsibility to use the full extent of their leverage to press their partners in the region to end the crisis.
"Instead of stoking the flames of a war that is strangling an entire population and risks destabilizing the entire region, they could be the brokers of peace," the statement added.
Accompanied by a constraining land, aerial and naval blockade, the Saudi-led war, which started in 2015, has been energized by the U.S. Department of Defense, which confirmed a US$750 million military sale to the kingdom in June, according to Reuters. The United Kingdom has also chipped in, to say the least, licensing roughly US$4.2 billion dollars worth of warmongering hardware to Riyadh.
Amid the bombing and devastation, which has forced more than a million to flee their homes, Yemen also faces a severe cholera outbreak that has claimed the lives of at least 2,119 people, according to Alexandre Faite, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Another eight million are on the verge of starvation.
Johan Mooij, CARE's Country Director in Yemen, described the situation as “appalling.” He added that “millions of Yemenis are facing multiple crises of war, hunger, disease outbreaks and recent blockades on fuel and commercial imports.”
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