by Our Foreign Desk

HOUTHI Shi’ite rebels and their allies defied intensified bombings by warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition at the weekend to take control of the strategic city of Saeed in the southern province of Shabwa.

Government officials claimed that Saeed had fallen after some local tribal sheikhs and military leaders had accepted money and weapons to facilitate Houthi entry into the area. Saudi Arabia and the West accuse Iran of supporting the Houthis militarily, which they deny. Human Rights Watch (HRW) published new evidence yesterday accusing Saudi coalition warplanes of using internationally outlawed cluster bombs against innocent civilians.

The New York-based organisation visited the Saada province in northern Yemen last month to compile its report. HRW says that it managed to document the use of three types of cluster munitions in Yemen.

“The Saudi-led coalition and other warring parties in Yemen need to recognise that using banned cluster munitions is very likely to harm civilians,” said HRW senior emergencies researcher Ole Solvang.

“These weapons can’t distinguish military targets from civilians and their unexploded submunitions threaten civilians, especially children, even long after the fighting,” he added.

HRW has also urged nations backing the Saudis, such as the US, to denounce the use of the illegal munitions.

Saudi Arabia and its allies have not signed up to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits their use.

This is not the first time HRW has highlighted the Saudi-led coalition’s use of cluster bombs. It accuses the US of supplying the munitions used to bomb Houthi positions.

Israeli ammunition and weapons were part of a large cache of military material found in the Saudi embassy in Yemen’s capital Sana’a, according to weekend report by the Iranian Fars News Agency.

Houthi rebels captured the embassy on Saturday, driving away about 40 guards.

As well as Israeli weaponry, rebels also uncovered documents detailing a US plan to build a military base on Saudi-controlled Mayyun Island in the narrow entrance to the Red Sea between Yemen and Africa.

The Saudi Press Agency reported late on Saturday that shelling from Yemen had killed a border guard and wounded seven others in the Jazan region.