Yemen's Houthis fire missile at Saudi Arabia as UN accuses all sides of war crimes

Houthis say missile fired at Saudi Arabia's Najran region as UN releases report saying both sides might be guilty of 'war crimes'.

DUBAI - Yemen's Houthi rebels fired a ballistic missile just over the border into Saudi Arabia, causing no apparent casualties, amid growing international concern about civilian casualties from a Saudi-led air campaign.

A Badr-1 missile targeted "a new military camp" in Najran, Houthi-controlled al-Masirah TV said on Wednesday, without indicating when the missile was launched. Saudi air defences intercepted a missile fired towards the southern city of Najran on Tuesday but there were no casualties.

Saudi Arabia is leading a Western-backed alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab states trying to restore the internationally recognized government of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, ousted from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in 2015.

The Iran-aligned Houthis control most of the west of Yemen, including its Red Sea coast.

UN human rights experts said in a report on Tuesday that both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi militia may be guilty of war crimes in the conflict, which has raged for more than three years.

Houthi crimes

The experts' panel said air strikes by the coalition in Yemen have caused heavy civilian casualties, raising concerns about its targeting process.

It said that restrictions Saudi Arabia has placed on the delivery of humanitarian aid by sea or air have had such a severe humanitarian impact on civilians that they may be amount to a war crime.

But the panel also accused Houthi fighters of restricting access to aid and conscripting child soldiers. The Houthis regularly fire missiles on southern Saudi Arabia and occasionally aim for higher-value targets, such as the capital Riyadh or facilities of state oil company Aramco.

The report expressed concern about the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons by Houthi militias in densely populated urban areas and blamed the rebels for preventing access to humanitarian goods needed by civilians.

It said that sniper attacks by Houthi militias have resulted in a large numbers of civilian casualties, specifically citing incidents in the provinces of Hajjah, Lahig and Taiz.

The report also pointed out that in the areas under their control since 2015, the Houthis have been guilty of targeting political opponents by freezing their bank accounts, as well as arbitrary detention and torture, launching crackdowns on the media and closing down civil society organizations.

Coalition response

The UN experts said they did not examine the United States and Britain, who supply weapons and intelligence to the alliance, or Iranian support for the Houthis. It said that other UN bodies were doing so and urged all states to restrict arms sales to help end the war.

But states in the coalition hit back against the accusations, with United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash saying that the UN report merited a response.

"We should review and respond to the (UN) experts' report," said Gargash in a tweet.

"The coalition is fulfilling its role in reclaiming the Yemeni state and securing the future of the region from Iranian interference," he added.

The coalition meanwhile said it had referred the UN report to its legal team for review and would announce the conclusions of the review after it is completed.

In the US, a New York Times editorial on Wednesday condemned what it called "American complicity" in civilian casualties and urged Congress to cut military aid to Saudi Arabia.

In Washington on Tuesday, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said US support for the Saudi-led coalition was not unconditional, but suggested the United States would continue to support the alliance as it worked to reduce the impact on civilians.

“We reviewed the support for the Arab Coalition when we came into office, we determined that it was the right thing to do to support them in the defense of their own countries but also to restore the rightful government in Yemen,” Mattis said.

The United Nations has convened talks in Geneva on Sept 6, the first effort to negotiate the war in more than two years.