Britain Says Will Take UN Report on Yemen War 'Extremely Seriously'
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Britain said on Thursday it would take "extremely seriously" the findings of a United Nations report which says British military ally Saudi Arabia could have committed crimes against humanity in Yemen
A United Nations report on Wednesday said the Saudi-led coalition has targeted civilians in Yemen, documenting 119 sorties "relating to violations of international humanitarian law".
British foreign office minister Tobias Ellwood said he had not yet received the report officially from the UN but that he had seen some of its contents.
"I will take the report extremely seriously, this absolutely must be the case, and I commit to sit down with the Saudi Arabians at a very senior level ... and discuss the allegations," Ellwood said, according to Reuters.
"We must do this in a methodic way which is based on evidence."
On March 26, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies began to launch deadly airstrikes against the Houthi movement in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
Nearly 7,500 people have been killed since the coalition started the aggression on Yemen, almost half of them civilians. The war has exacerbated hunger and disease in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country.
The United Nations has designated Yemen as one of its highest-level humanitarian crises, alongside emergencies in South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. It says more than 21 million people in Yemen need help, or about 80 percent of the population.
