The Executive Center for Mine Action: Ten citizens martyred and injured in explosion from the aggression’s remnants

Sana’ – Saba:

In the provinces of Marib and Amran yesterday and today, the explosion of US-Saudi aggression leftovers resulted in six citizens, including two children, being martyred and four others being injured, according to a statement received by the Yemeni News Agency (Saba) from the Executive Center for Mine Action.

The statement noted that the Center’s statistics for the first half of 2023 totaled 150 victims between martyrs and wounded, but that this statistic is not all-inclusive.

According to the statement, 9,500 victims—martyrs and wounded—have been documented since the aggression’s start on March 26, 2015. The majority of whom were fall by the cluster bombs used excessively by the aggression alliance on a large scale in the Yemeni provinces.

The Center has been continuously and actively urging the United Nations and its humanitarian organizations to supply the Center’s detecting devices for clearing Yemeni territories in recent years, according to the statement, given the increasing number of victims.

“Despite the widespread pollution Yemen is experiencing, which was confirmed by the Director of the United Nations Mine Action Service during a press conference at Sanaa Airport during her visit to Yemen last December, who stated that Yemen is the most heavily polluted country in the world with mines, cluster bombs, and war remnants, the United Nations has not responded to providing the devices until today,” the statement continued. Yemen ranks third in terms of the number of victims, according to UN reports.

Instead of reducing its support, which has increased to 90% since the start of 2023, the UN was called on by the Mine Action Center to carry out its humanitarian role by supplying detecting equipment and continuing to fund mine action operations.

The statement reaffirmed that the UN has suspended all its operations since the beginning of this July, despite the availability of funding and support, and that it has imposed restrictions on the provision of such resources for the Center’s activities, which are illegal under international treaties, agreements, protocols, and the Geneva Convention, as well as Yemeni laws and legislation.

The statement indicated that these conditions were primarily put in place to serve the interests of the countries of the aggression alliance, which are considered the primary responsible parties for excessively using cluster bombs in Yemen without regard for the lives of Yemeni children and civilians.

As stipulated in Article 6 of the Ottawa Convention, the statement also urged the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, civil society organizations, and the media to carry out their duties in light of the United Nations’ decision to cease mine-related activities in Yemen.

Given that the suspension of humanitarian activities is incompatible with the principles of working with neutrality as stipulated in the Geneva Convention, protocols, humanitarian laws, and protecting civilians during or after wars, the Executive Mine Action Center emphasized that the United Nations bears the humanitarian and ethical responsibility for the rising number of victims.