U.N. Report Says Saudi-Led Coalition Attacked Migrant Boat Off Yemen
By SOMINI SENGUPTAJULY 26, 2017
UNITED NATIONS — A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia
that is fighting insurgents in Yemen was most likely responsible for a fatal attack in March on a boat packed with migrants fleeing the war zone, a United Nations panel has concluded.
The fatal shots were probably fired from a machine gun or minigun, a type of rotary machine gun, on a helicopter "most likely
operating from a naval vessel," the panel wrote in its 185-page confidential report to the United Nations Security Council.
Neither Saudi Arabia nor the United Arab Emirates, which has naval forces in the area, cooperated with the panel, the report said, accusing them of "obstruction." Nor did
the Houthis, the rebels who have seized part of Yemen, give the panel access to the port of Al Hudaydah, which they control, to interview survivors and examine evidence.
The report paints a harrowing picture of what happened on the night of March 16 as a boat packed with
up to 145 people, mostly Somalis, was sailing across the Red Sea, away from the Yemeni coast.
First, rockets were fired, and then, sustained gunfire from either a "medium machine
gun or minigun of 7.62 mm caliber mounted on a helicopter," according to the report.
The Saudi-led coalition has such weapons, according to the panel, and so do many of the warships in the Red Sea
that belong to what is called a combined maritime force, which includes ships from Britain, Canada and the United States.