Saudi-led coalition probes in Yemen lack credibility: HR group

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CAIRO: An international rights group says the Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite rebels in Yemen has failed to redress civilian victims and conduct credible investigations into alleged war crimes committed there.

Friday’s 90-page report by Human Rights Watch says the coalition’s “sham investigations” have fallen short of “international standards regarding transparency, impartiality, and independence.”

HRW’s Mideast director, Sarah Leah Whitson, says countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia aren’t protected from “being complicit in serious violations in Yemen.”

Earlier this month, coalition airstrikes hit a bus in a busy market in Yemen’s north, killing at least 51 people including 40 children. The coalition said it would investigate.

The coalition has been at war with the Iran-backed Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, since March 2015 in what has now become a mostly stalemated conflict.