US-backed Saudi Coalition Airstrikes Targeting a Yemeni Fish Market & Hospital Killed Over 50 Civilians, Injuring 100+ on Thursday

(Photo: al-Masirah TV/Geopolitics Alerts) - Damage from the recent Saudi bombing in port town of al-Hudaydah.

Yemen cries for peace and Saudi Kingdom responds with...Dropping bombs on yet more civilians

On August 1st, as part of an initiative for peace by Yemen's Houthi government, the declared two-week unilateral suspension of retaliatory attacks against Saudi-led coalition forces in the Red Sea by Yemeni forces went into effect. Literally the very next day, the Saudi Coalition responded to Yemen's peace efforts by intentionally targeting Yemeni civilians yet again in a series of airstrikes on Thursday, bombing both a fish market and hospital multiple times in Hodeida province, which left at least 52 civilians dead and over 100 injured, according to a spokesman for Yemen's Ministry of Health.

According to MintPress News, Saudi warplanes first bombed a fish market in al-Hudayda, and then followed up with airstrikes on the nearby al-Thawrah hospital gate as those injured by the first attack began to arrive. Airstrikes then hit the fish market a second time, and targeted a motorcycle park next to the hospital as well as ambulances attempting to take the injured to San'a, Yemen's capitol, and at least one such ambulance was destroyed. The death count is now believed to be around 60, with 130 more injured.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, President of the Houthis-led Revolutionary Committee, said on Twitter that this incident “confirms for the thousand time that the leaders of the aggression reject peace.” And considering the timing of this gruesome attack, coming just two days after the Houthi government announced their two-week suspension of attacks on Saudi vessels in the Red Sea and the day after that suspension went into effect, I would have to agree.

Prior to this attack, in a statement to the UN Security Council regarding this peace initiative, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi made it abundantly clear that the people of Yemen and the Houthi government wants peace, and expressed the Yemeni position that it is the US-backed Saudi coalition and not the Houthis who are responsible for the continuation of Saudi Arabia's ongoing war of aggression against Yemen which began in 2015.

We offered many compromises and peace initiatives in Switzerland and Kuwait negotiations and the other side rejected them. We welcomed all initiatives and ceasefires, which were declared and then violated by the other side; moreover, they used them [the ceasefires] to escalate their military operations.

Today, after the international community reached a full consensus, the Security Council declared that the solution in Yemen is a political solution. Out of our concern of the values of the Yemeni blood, human health, and our religious values, in addition to the respect of holy months and responding to all the peace initiatives by some Arab figures — and also the peace efforts by Mr. Martin Griffiths, the special envoy of the secretary-general for Yemen — we declared our peace initiative by calling upon the Yemeni officials to stop all military operations in the sea battlefronts – to become a complete ceasefire on all the battlefronts if the coalition will respond with the same action, as we hope they will do if they are really considering peace for the Yemeni people who are still suffering, because of the blockade and the aggression, a humanitarian crisis considered to be the worst in the world, especially now with such high level of famine and spread of epidemics.

The full Houthi statement can be read on MintPress News, which provided an English translation of the full speech.

Yemen asked for peace, made this gesture towards that effort, and added that it would "become a complete ceasefire on all the battlefronts if the coalition will respond with the same action, as we hope they will do if they are really considering peace for the Yemeni people who are still suffering;" while the Saudi response clearly indicates that the coalition is not really considering peace for the Yemeni people, who are suffering as a direct result of the coalition's sea and air blockade as well as their indiscriminate bombing of civilians and civilian targets, including the systematic destruction of Yemen's water treatment facilities.

The Saudis for their part have denied carrying out the recent airstrikes in Hodeida, instead blaming Houthi militias for the attack. According to Reuters, the coalition’s Colonel Turki Al-Malaki made the following statement to Saudi-run Al-Arabiya news:

The coalition follows a strict and transparent approach based on the rules of international law. We pursue any allegations and if there is any responsibility we will hold it transparently … Coalition did not carry out any operations in al-Hudaydah today … Houthi militia are behind killing of civilians in al-Hudaydah on today.”

Besides offering no evidence for this claim, the entire Yemeni air force was wiped out by Saudi airstrikes at the beginning of the coalition's war of aggression against the people of Yemen in 2015, meaning the Houthi militia is entirely incapable of carrying out airstrikes of any kind, making the absurdity of this Saudi claim even more apparent. For a better understanding of the Houthis and the ongoing war in Yemen, I highly recommend watching the very informative SouthFront documentary below, The Houthis and War in Yemen:

As I have pointed out in previous posts on this subject, the war in Yemen is really nothing less than a long and slow genocide of the Yemeni people by the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition, and this latest attack is just one more example in a long line of examples of heinous war crimes committed against the civilian population of Yemen which demonstrates this.

Sadly, the primary reasons that Yemen is unlikely to see peace in the near future is because peace is far less profitable for the Empire than war, and the Houthi-led Yemen is staunchly anti-imperialistic in nature, a threat to the imperial goals of the U.S., U.K., and Israel, who have all allied themselves with the murderous House of Saud in this conflict. In fact, the very reason for the war to begin with was the removal from power of the Saudi puppet in Yemen by the Houthi rebels backed by some of the Yemeni army and the people as a whole, which prompted the Saudi-led coalition's invasion and start of the ongoing airstrike campaign in 2015.

To this day, the Saudi coalition has been largely unsuccessful at achieving its military goals of crushing the Houthi government and re-instating their puppet who was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia to save his life. It has therefore resorted to repeated attacks against the Yemeni population and civilian infrastructure as punishment for their overwhelming support of the current Houthi government and rejection of Saudi colonization of their country. So far, this genocidal tactic has not been successful except at slaughtering Yemenis, and has only served to galvanize the people of Yemen behind the Houthis and against the coalition and their genocidal war of aggression.

This combined with the tactically superior Houthi fighters has left the Saudi coalition frustrated and unable to achieve any significant military victories, such as the continued failure of their months-long campaign to seize control of the strategic port city of al-Hudaydah. This is despite the coalition's devastating sea and air blockade, and despite direct support from both the U.K. and especially the U.S., who has even deployed ground troops to Yemen.

For example, just today Houthi fighters successfully ambushed a large unit of the Saudi coalition along the western coast of Yemen, destroying several armored vehicles and capturing 35 coalition fighters. They have on previous occasions carried out successful surprise attacks, with one such attack against a Saudi-occupied port, and continue to push into Saudi Arabia where they now control of over 100 miles of Saudi territory near the border, which they primarily use as a staging ground for ambushing Saudi coalition forces inside the Kingdom.

To put it bluntly, Houthi-run Yemen is a threat to the imperialistic geopolitical goals of Saudi Arabia, the U.S., the U.K. and Israel - they pose a serious threat to the Empire and so just like Iran and Syria, in the eyes of the Imperial Oligarchs who rule the earth, Yemen must be neutralized.

However, the Empire is currently failing miserably at implementing its imperialistic goals upon Syria, badly losing an extremely well funded 7-year proxy war against President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Arab Army, and has had no better luck in Yemen, which is far less equipped and a much poorer country than Syria. Let us hope that this is an indication of a major geopolitical shift in power away from Western imperialism and perpetual war which has left millions dead in the past couple decades alone, and that the U.S.-backed invading imperial forces in Syria, Yemen, Palestine and Ukraine (among others) will finally be repelled and rejected.

It is time that America allows these oppressed people to determine their own destinies, without forcing 'democracy' or 'protection' upon them in the form of bombs, military invasions, occupations and genocides, and by refusing to ally ourselves with those nations which do so - namely Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., the U.A.E. and Turkey, among others. We expect nothing less from all the nations of the world, and it is time we begin to treat them in the same way we expect to be treated.

The current U.S. foreign policy of imperialism and perpetual war has brought nothing but death, destruction, an insane national debt, and the wrath of much of the world against us. It is time to recognize this failure, take a chance, and try a foreign policy based instead upon trade and peace. This solution would certainly be better for everyone, the average American included, and would only hurt the bankers and weapons manufacturers who profit off of the Empire's model of endless, perpetual war.

But these greedy few are merchants of death who fund murderers, terrorist groups and war criminals, and who consider human life to be less valuable than their profits and power, and it is time we stop defending these rich and arrogant criminal psychopaths and their corporations as 'essential' for the American economy. It is time for America to start caring about humanity more than money, for until that day comes, the world will likely not see peace.