GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement has committed war crimes since the expiry of a peace agreement last month, the United Nations’ human rights chief said on Friday, citing incidents of sniper attacks and shelling.
Yemen’s warring parties failed to renew a U.N.-brokered truce deal that expired a month ago, dashing the hopes of some Yemenis for a broader pact that would ease economic woes and prolong relative calm after more than seven years of fighting.
Since then the U.N. human rights office said it has verified three incidents of shelling in government controlled-areas that killed a boy and a man and wounded others as well as three incidents of sniper shootings, attributing the attacks to Yemen’s Houthi movement.
“We are gravely concerned for the safety and security of civilians,” said Jeremy Laurence, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.
“The deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects is prohibited by international law and constitutes a war crime”.
The Houthi side had no immediate comment.
A U.N. spokesperson told the same Geneva briefing on Friday that efforts were continuing to revive the truce deal between a Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi group.
The conflict, widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has killed tens of thousands, devastated Yemen’s economy and left millions hungry.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Gareth Jones)
