The U.S. Bombs a Civilian Port in Yemen

The bombing must stop.

Trump’s illegal war in Yemen continues:

US strikes on a Yemeni fuel port killed at least 74 people, Huthi rebels said Friday, in the deadliest attack of Washington's 15-month campaign against the Iran-backed group.

The latest U.S. attack killed dozens of people and injured at least another 171. Many of those killed were reportedly port workers and paramedics who came to assist the wounded. Our government is conducting a very destructive and unnecessary air war, and it is killing a lot of Yemeni civilians. The bombing must stop.

This is an attack on civilian infrastructure. Centcom can rationalize it however they like, but bombing a civilian port is excessive and wrong. Attacking a country’s fuel supplies will have serious consequences for the civilian population. Fuel shortages inevitably worsen the country’s humanitarian crisis, as a lack of fuel makes it more difficult and expensive to transport food and medicine to people in need. There is also a good chance that attacking oil facilities at the port will have caused oil spills resulting in significant environmental damage.

Like earlier Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure in Yemen, the port attack is likely unlawful. The targeted port itself is extremely important to the civilian population, as Human Rights Watch noted in its report on the Israeli attacks in January:

The Hodeidah and Ras Issa ports, however, are critical for delivering food and other necessities to the Yemeni population, who depend on imports.

Centcom claims that the strike “was not intended to harm the people of Yemen,” but this is nonsense. You an don’t attack an important port that the population relies on if you don’t intend to harm the people. The workers and other victims were ordinary Yemenis going about their lives until they were blown up and set on fire by U.S. airstrikes.

Yemeni civilians have been paying the price for the intensification of the U.S. war. According to the Yemen Data Project, U.S. strikes from mid-March through the first week of April killed and injured at least 142 civilians. The latest attack on the port is sure to drive that number up significantly. As long as this campaign is allowed to go on, more innocent people will be killed by U.S. weapons.

The U.S. should never have started bombing Yemen. Biden was wrong to start it last year, and Trump was wrong to escalate last month. The U.S. should leave Yemen in peace and stop entangling itself in unnecessary foreign wars.