US welcomes Saudi move to wind down Yemen campaign

As tribal mediation brings calm to the Saudi-Yemen border after a nearly year-long campaign led by Riyadh against Yemeni rebels, Washington has welcomed talk of an end to the coalition’s major combat.

The United Nations on Friday echoed US concerns over non-military casualties, saying the alliance had caused the vast majority of civilian deaths in the war.

“We have expressed our concerns about the loss of innocent life in Yemen. The violence there that is plaguing that country has caught too many innocent civilians in the crossfire,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Thursday.

He said “we would welcome and do welcome” a statement from the coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, who told AFP in an exclusive interview that the coalition is “in the end of the major combat phase”.

This would be followed by security stabilisation and then reconstruction, Assiri said.

The coalition intervened on March 26 last year to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after rebels seized large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

Supported by coalition air strikes and some ground troops, anti-rebel forces have retaken territory, including much of the south.

But they have failed to dislodge the Shiite Huthi rebels from Sanaa or to completely remove them from the country’s third city Taez where intese battles continue.

Mustafa Alani, of the independent Gulf Research Centre, said that although fighting is not necessarily going to finish by March 26 “the operation is basically reaching its end.”

He said the coalition is keen “not to go beyond that psychological date.”

Rights groups have raised concerns about civilian casualties caused by the coalition as well as by the Huthis, who are allied with elite troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

There have been repeated criticisms that coalition air strikes have not done enough to avoid non-military targets.

“Looking at the figures, it would seem that the coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together,” UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

The United Nations said 119 people were killed in air strikes on a market in the rebel-held northern province of Hajja on Tuesday.

Zeid’s office said 106 of those killed were civilians, including 24 children.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded an investigation into the incident, one of the deadliest yet in the war.