Air strike in Sana'a, Yemen. Ibrahem Qasim/Flickr
This article was first published in November 2016.
On Saturday 8th October, more than 140 people were killed and over 500 injured when warplanes bombed a funeral in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. In the words of one rescuer, “The place has been turned into a lake of blood.” The airstrike, which was quickly attributed to Saudi Arabia’s military, prompted brief sparks of international outrage as civilians were once again targets in a war which has killed more than 10,000 people. The Saudi authorities later confirmed that the strike was a “deliberate error”. Those who pay greater heed to the Geneva Conventions, the so-called “Laws of War” that govern the conduct of armed conflict, might more accurately describe it as a war crime.
