ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Saudi Arabia is increasingly using the internationally-prohibited cluster bombs in its airstrikes on Yemen, thus doubling the casualties among women and children. According to the Yemeni news agency, SABA, Saudi fighter jets pounded, yesterday, the district of Baqem in the northern province of Sa’ada with cluster bombs. It is believed that at least 105 Yemeni civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed by cluster bombs dropped by Saudi warplanes during 2015. The UK-based Thomson Reuters Corporation published a report on behalf of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) saying these missiles which can be fired on the ground or in the air are capable of turning into hundreds of smaller bombs influencing a larger area. These smaller splinter versions of these bombshells survive on the ground and act as a potential threat like a landmine. Due to their miniature design and toy-like appearance, these bombs pose a great danger to children in particular.

Yesterday saw a series of dead blasts rio through Damascus, Tartous, Homs and Hasakah. ISIS took responsibility for the attacks. Bahram Qassemi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, condemned the attacks and highlighted the Saudi Wahhabi ideology that ISIS follow. “The actions taken by the criminal Takfiri terrorists and their Wahhabi supporters to target civilian citizens indicates their dejection and defeat in military warfare and the defeat of their political pipe dreams in the region,” he said. He then explained that the international community had to stop being indifferent to the crimes committed in Syria and Yemen. “International conventions and the international community have to stop remaining indifferent toward those ordering, supporting, and perpetrating these reprehensible crimes,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.