Andrew Mitchell, Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield and former international development secretary, explained “Instead of using our influence at the UN to secure a ceasefire and a peace process we are widely viewed as complicit in causing monstrous famine conditions. Britain makes a point of emphasising our financial support for Yemen through aid but this is a bit like punching him in the face and then offering him a sponge and an Elastoplast."
A vital cholera treatment centre in Abs, in the Hajjah province, was hit in June in coalition war strikes – which are supported by British intelligence – despite the location being reported to the Saudi alliance more than 12 times.
Two months before that, coalition air raids severely damaged an Oxfam-supported water supply system that provided water for 6,000 people.
In June 2015 Saudi-coalition warplanes destroyed a warehouse of UK-funded aid in an airstrike.
Oxfam’s Dina el-Mamoun told the International Development Committee this week that UK aid to Yemen was being bombed.
Oxfam’s head of advocacy, Toni Pearce, called British policy towards Yemen “irresponsible and incoherent”, three years into a war which has sparked the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in numbers of people and pushed the country to the brink of famine.
She said: “On the one hand, British aid is a vital lifeline, on the other, British bombs are helping to fuel an ongoing war that is leading to countless lives being lost each week to fighting, disease and hunger. The UK continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, whose coalition bombing campaign in Yemen has cut off vital food supplies, destroyed hospitals and homes, and hit aid programmes funded by British taxpayers.”
Since Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies launched a bombing campaign to oust the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the spring of 2015, the UK has sold an estimated £3.87billion worth of arms to Riyadh. Despite reassurances from the UK government that its intelligence support and training of the Saudi-led forces is helping reduce civilian casualties, the latest report from the Yemen Data Project (YDP) shows that 48 per cent of all known airstrikes hit non-military targets.
YDP spokesperson Iona Craig told The Independent: “Since the Saudi/UAE-led coalition launched the ground offensive against Hodeidah in June, the data has shown a significant rise in non-military targeting. This is now a trend that has continued since June and peaked in September with 48 per cent of air raids targeting civilian sites.” She continued: “This continuing rise of civilian targeting has also been reflected in the casualty figures.”
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, who sits on the International Development Committee and the Committee on Arms Export Controls, said bombing our own aid was a “grim irony”. He told The Independent: “The government maintains the deceit that the British troops embedded in the Saudi air command centres are there to reduce civilian deaths in Yemen. As the number of civilian strikes are rising, both absolutely and as a proportion of total strikes, it either means our military presence in Saudi Arabia is totally ineffectual or that Britain is coordinating these attacks against civilians.”
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