40 Children Killed in Yemen Bus Strike

Forty children were among 51 people killed in a recent Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a bus in northern Yemen, the Red Cross said in a new toll on Tuesday.

Fifty-six children were also among the 79 people wounded in the Thursday strike on Saada province, a rebel stronghold that borders Saudi Arabia, the International Committee of the Red Cross said, AFP reported.

The new casualty toll came after a mass funeral was held for many of the dead children on Monday at which thousands vented anger against Riyadh and Washington.

Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 as Houthi fighters closed in on the last bastion of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government.

The conflict has killed nearly 10,000 people since then, the vast majority of them civilians, and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations.  

 Credible Probe

The UN Security Council called on Friday for a credible investigation into the deadly strike.

But it stopped short of demanding an independent investigation, and experts and aid groups voiced doubts that a promised coalition probe would provide transparency or accountability.

The coalition has been repeatedly blamed for bombing civilians, including a strike on a wedding hall in the Red Sea coastal town of Mokha in September 2015, in which 131 people died. The coalition denied responsibility.

In October 2016, a coalition airstrike killed 140 people at a funeral in the rebel-held capital Sanaa.

The high civilian death toll has been an embarrassment for Washington and other western governments which supply the coalition with warplanes and other weapons.

But Washington continues to provide replacement munitions as well as intelligence and refueling support for coalition aircraft.