US bombing of Yemen compounding dire humanitarian situation
'Now the rampant bombing has started, you never know which way things will go,' said Siddiq Khan, who works as a country director in Yemen for the aid charity Islamic Relief.
For more than two weeks, US airstrikes have hit the Gulf country, targeting the anti-western Houthi movement, which controls most of the war-torn country. 'Hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before,' the US president said after launching initial strikes, the first such use of US military might in the region since he retook power in January.
The bombings aim to punish the Houthis for their attacks on commercial cargo traffic in Red Sea shipping lines, which the militants say are a response to Israel's killings in Gaza.
Details about Trump's military campaign were exposed in public last week when a journalist was accidentally added to a private group chat with senior US officials in which they boasted about the initial operations.
The US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, wrote in the Signal app group that the Houthis' 'top missile guy' had been killed after walking into his 'girlfriend's building'. He provided no information on whether the woman was also killed, or any mention of efforts to mitigate civilian harm. JD Vance, the vice-president, responded by saying 'excellent', and Waltz replied later with emojis of a clenched fist, a US flag and a blazing flame.
Strikes have targeted Sana'a, Yemen's capital, as well as the port city of Hodeidah and the Houthi stronghold of Sa'ada. The targets include densely populated areas, but assessing the impact on civilians of the strikes – which are coordinated with and supported by UK armed forces – is difficult.
Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the Houthis had blocked off 'any and all access' to bomb sites and hospitals as part of a crackdown on civil society and the media. But she added: 'There is no question there are civilian casualties. Residential areas are being hit in the middle of the night, which is a sure-fire way to kill civilians.'
The Houthi-run Saba news agency has said the US has twice bombed a cancer hospital in the country's north and accused the US of 'full-fledged war crimes by targeting civilians and civilian objects, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries in several governorates'. Independent groups have also suggested a high degree of civilian harm.
In a post on X, the Yemen Data Project, which monitors attacks in the country, said that the first week of attacks had killed at least 25 civilians, including four children. About half of the strikes had hit civilian sites, including a school, a wedding hall, residential areas and Bedouin tents, it said.
The group added: 'The very first US strike in Yemen under the new Trump administration, carried out on the evening of 15 March (and the subject of that Signal group chat), hit al-Jaraf in the north of the capital, killing at least 13 civilians and injuring nine.'
Another monitoring group, Airwars, which tracks and analyses open-source information, has documented women and children being killed and injured. The UN says it has verified that at least two boys, aged six and eight, were killed in strikes in northern Sa'ada, with a third missing.
Photos of the aftermath show destroyed residential buildings, with water tanks and shredded clothes within the rubble. A US defence official said 'battle damage assessments' were being conducted and 'do not indicate civilian casualties'. They added: 'We likely won't have any updates until after the conclusion of operations.'
A decade of violence has shattered Yemen's already weak economy and left millions of people unable to find decent livelihoods to support their families. As a result, out of a population of roughly 36 million, about 19 million people require aid – 15 million of whom are women and children. Half of all children under five in Yemen are malnourished, according to Unicef. An aid plan for 2025 is only 6.5% funded so far.
Khan, from Islamic Relief, said the recent bombings were adding pressure on to an aid sector that was already collapsing under other Trump measures. Two of the biggest factors have been the huge cuts to USAid and the designation of the Houthis as a 'foreign terrorist organisation', which puts aid groups working in the vast Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen at legal risk in the US.
Humanitarian organisations are now scrambling to work out how to operate in the country without being in breach of US law and with much less funding, all in addition to an intense bombing campaign.
'Overall, there has been a gradual but then sharp kind of decline in humanitarian aid to Yemen,' he said. 'Obviously, many organisations are kind of downsizing and some have closed as well.
'The bombings have further scared the organisations here about whether this will be the right place to stay and work. So overall, there's a huge vacuum … taking over the humanitarian sector here,' he added. 'I see a real catastrophe coming Yemen's way.'
Another aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said their staff were 'dealing with really, so many things at the same time, which is compounding our ability to access people right now'.
The Houthis, which are backed by Iran, have already restricted access and detained aid workers over the past year, creating a climate of fear among the aid community.
'So all of this really impacts the way our staff feel comfortable and safe to provide services to the communities,' said the aid worker. 'Yet at the same time, they are very determined to provide as many services as possible to the communities.'
Washington is one of several belligerent actors in Yemen, which has suffered a decade of civil war, with several states, including neighbouring Saudi Arabia, conducting bombing campaigns.
The effectiveness of strikes on the Houthis, without troops on the ground, has been repeatedly questioned as the group has already managed to survive years of attacks.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
20 minutes ago
- The Independent
Stephen Flynn jokes he'll be ‘washing hair' when Donald Trump visits UK
Stephen Flynn joked he will be washing his hair when Donald Trump is in the UK for his state visit in September. The Scottish National Party's (SNP) Westminster leader, who is bald, told Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that he will find "any excuse possible" to avoid meeting the US president on his visit to Scotland. While insisting it was 'absolutely right' that First Minister John Swinney meets Mr Trump, Mr Flynn quipped that he'd be 'looking after his own toddlers' while the Republican is in the country.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Pete Hegseth is skirting law by bringing back Confederate names of army bases
Since Donald Trump returned to office this year, his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ripped the new names off a series of US army bases and brought back their old traitorous Confederate names. His actions have angered Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, prompting a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by the Republican-controlled Congress last Tuesday. The GOP-led House of Representatives Armed Services Committee voted on 15 July to block Hegseth from renaming the bases after Confederates. Two Republicans voted with the Democrats on the committee to pass the measure, which was an amendment to the Pentagon's budget bill. 'What this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress,' said Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican representative who voted to stop Hegseth. Hegseth's move elicited bipartisan anger because it flouted the law; Congress passed legislation in January 2021 to create a commission to choose new names for the bases named for Confederates and mandated that its recommendations be implemented by the Pentagon. That law was passed over a veto by Trump in the final days of his first term, and the name changes were later implemented by the Pentagon during the Biden administration. The law is still on the books, and so in order to return to the old Confederate names, Hegseth has openly played games with their namesakes. The secretary claims he has renamed the bases after American soldiers from throughout US history who were not Confederates. But they all conveniently have the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes of the bases. For example, Fort Bragg is now supposedly named for Roland Bragg, who was an army paratrooper in the second world war; Fort Benning is now supposedly named for Fred Benning, a soldier who served in the army in the first world war. Before the House vote, Hegseth's efforts to skirt the law were also challenged in the Senate. In a hearing in June, Angus King, a senator from Maine, told Hegseth that he was returning the bases to the names of 'people who took up arms against their country on behalf of slavery'. Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon had found non-Confederates with the same names to stay within 'the limits of what Congress allowed us to do'. But during the same hearing, Hegseth briefly dropped the pretense that he wasn't returning to the original Confederate names. He argued that 'there is a legacy, a connection' for veterans with the old names. King replied that Hegseth's actions were 'an insult to the people of the United States'. Above all, Hegseth's actions show a troubling ignorance of the lives of the original Confederate namesakes; their easily-researched backgrounds reveal what terrible role models they make for modern American military personnel. Braxton Bragg was one of the most incompetent Confederate generals of the civil war. His subordinates repeatedly and clandestinely tried to get him fired, with one writing to the Confederate secretary of war that 'nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander'. Bragg finally lost his command after he was out-generaled by Union General Ulysses S Grant and his army was routed at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863. One of the few biographies written about him is entitled Braxton Bragg, the Most Hated Man in the Confederacy. And yet Bragg lives on today as the namesake of the largest and most important military base in the United States Army. Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina was originally built in 1918, as part of a rushed effort by the army to construct new bases after the United States entered the first world war. The site offered the army cheap and abundant land, and it quickly built a base and surrounding military reservation totaling 251 sq miles. Eager to win local white support, the army agreed to name the new base after a Confederate; Bragg was chosen because he was originally from North Carolina. By the time the base was built, the civil war had been over for more than 50 years, yet the south was still in the grips of the 'the Lost Cause' theory of the war, which romanticized the civil war and held that the south had fought for state's rights, not slavery, and that the Confederacy had fielded better officers and men and had only lost because of the overwhelming resources of the north. By 1918, when Bragg's name was attached to the base, the generation of Confederate officers who hated him were gone, along with the memory of his military blunders. That pattern held for a series of major bases built throughout the south during the first and second world wars. Fort Benning was also built in 1918 near Columbus, Georgia. At the request of the Columbus Rotary Club, the army named it for Henry Lewis Benning, who was best known as a pro-slavery political firebrand from Columbus who helped draft Georgia's ordinance of secession. Benning was one of the pre-eminent white supremacists of his day, and he openly admitted that his state seceded because of slavery, not states rights. In one speech, he said that his state seceded because of a 'deep conviction on the part of Georgia that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery … If things are allowed to go on as they are … we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it supposed that the white race will stand for that?' Benning served in the Confederate army, but it was his political role as a proponent of a southern slavocracy that first brought him fame and prominence. By the 21st century, there were still 10 army bases that were named for Confederates, and the Pentagon repeatedly resisted efforts to change their names, arguing that tradition outweighed the fact that the bases were named for traitors who had fought to preserve slavery. The Confederate base names were finally changed after the 2020 George Floyd protests; Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty, while Fort Benning became Fort Moore, named for Vietnam War hero Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Moore. (Mel Gibson played Hal Moore and Madeleine Stowe played Julia Moore in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.) But those new names didn't survive Trump's return to office. Hegseth hasn't stopped with army bases. The Pentagon has announced it will strip the name off the US navy ship Harvey Milk, which was named for the gay rights pioneer who was assassinated in 1978, and rename it for Oscar V Peterson, a sailor who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the second world war. But one thing is certain: Braxton Bragg's civil war contemporaries would be shocked to discover that a man so widely derided as a loser and a martinet during his lifetime is still at the center of a national debate 160 years after the war ended. During the war, one Confederate newspaper editor described him as a man with 'an iron hand and a wooden head'. Grant, the man who so badly beat Bragg during the war, took great pleasure in making fun of Bragg and his ridiculous behavior when he later wrote his memoirs. Grant recounted one infamous episode involving Bragg from the time before the civil war when both men served in the small, pre-war US army. 'On one occasion, when stationed at a post … (Bragg) was commanding one of the companies and at the same time acting as post quartermaster … As commander of the company he made a requisition upon the quartermaster – himself – for something he wanted. As quartermaster he declined to fill the requisition and endorsed on the back of it his reasons for so doing. As company commander he responded to this, urging that his requisition called for nothing but what he was entitled to, and that it was the duty of the quartermaster to fill it. As quartermaster he still persisted that he was right … Bragg referred the whole matter to the commanding officer of the post. The latter exclaimed: 'My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarrelling with yourself!' In his memoirs, Grant wrote that Bragg was 'naturally disputatious'. So maybe Braxton Bragg would fit in perfectly with Donald Trump after all.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Reeves ‘eyes £5bn windfall from sale of seized cryptocurrency'
Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a £5bn pre-Budget windfall as the government considers selling off seized cryptocurrency to plug a hole in the public finances. The Home Office is reportedly working with police forces to offload at least £5bn worth of Bitcoin and other currencies taken from criminals. It is planning to develop a storage system for the currencies to handle their sale, it has emerged, as concerns about Labour's spending plans mount ahead of the autumn Budget. Home Office plans for a 'crypto storage and realisation framework' would allow law enforcement to securely store frozen digital currencies and sell them, The Sunday Telegraph reported. Ms Reeves has been left with a gap of at least £5bn to fill when she sets out the government's spending plans this autumn, with the government's chaotic U-turn on planned benefit cuts raising the likelihood of tax hikes. The chancellor and Sir Keir Starmer have left the door open to a wealth tax to cover the shortfall. As well as the £5bn black hole left by the welfare climbdown, the impact of sluggish economic growth and Donald Trump 's trade war could leave the Treasury scrambling to find as much as £20bn in tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere. It is not known how much cryptocurrency law enforcement agencies currently have, but one 2018 raid saw 61,000 Bitcoin seized from a Chinese Ponzi scheme. The value of Bitcoin has surged since Mr Trump's return to the White House, meaning the haul could be worth more than £5.4bn. Responding to the suggestion Ms Reeves could sell the reserves, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf said: 'This would be a terrible decision. The UK should be implementing Reform's Crypto Bill and increasing its Bitcoin reserves. 'Selling now will go down as a far worse decision than Gordon Brown's fire sale of our gold. 'The Westminster class are dinosaurs who don't get the future.' But Aidan Larkin, the chief executive of seizure company Asset Reality, told The Sunday Telegraph: 'There is oil under our feet in terms of digital assets, from an illicit perspective, that could have hundreds of millions of pounds coming back into the UK each year.' Bitcoin investors have been spurred on by Mr Trump, who has lent his support to the market both by promising new legislation and regulatory changes, but also even launching his own digital currencies. The leading cryptocurrency reached $120,000, marking both an all-time high and an important landmark for those who believe that bitcoin is undervalued.
