According to satellite imagery analysis, the US attacks carried out on Sa’ada prison compound struck the migrant detention centre and another building on the site.
Amnesty International spoke with three individuals who work with African migrant and refugee communities in Yemen. Two of them, who had visited the migrant detention centre as well as two nearby hospitals, and their morgues in the aftermath of the air strike, confirmed witnessing evidence of a high number of casualties. The organization also analysed satellite imagery and video footage of horrific scenes showing migrants’ bodies strewn across rubble and rescuers trying to pull badly wounded survivors from the debris.
“The major loss of civilian life in this attack raises serious concerns about whether the US complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the rules on distinction and precautions,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“The US must conduct a prompt, independent and transparent investigation into this air strike and into any other air strikes that have resulted in civilian casualties as well as those where the rules of international humanitarian law may have been violated.”
Witnesses who visited the Republican hospital and al Talh General hospital in Sa’ada, told Amnesty International they saw more than two dozen Ethiopian migrants who sustained injuries including severe amputations and fractures. They also said that the morgues at the hospitals ran out of space to receive dead bodies, so casualties received from the air strike had to be stacked outside. The ICRC, whose staff were at the site in the immediate aftermath of the attack, also confirmed in a statement a high number of casualties, many of whom were migrants.
Under international humanitarian law attacking forces have an obligation to do everything feasible to distinguish between military and civilian targets, to verify whether their intended target is a military objective and to cancel an attack if there is doubt. When attacking a military objective, parties to a conflict must also take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians in the vicinity.
If civilian harm is found to have occurred, victims and their families should receive full reparation for violations of international humanitarian law. Furthermore, if investigations find that there were direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or indiscriminate attacks striking military targets and civilians without distinction and which killed or injured civilians, they should be investigated and treated as violations of internation law and potential war crimes.
Amnesty International’s arms experts analysed photos of the remnants of the weapons used in the attack and identified fragments of at least two 250 pound precision-guided GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs. The US should have known Sa’ada prison was a detention facility, that has been used to detain migrants and that it was regularly visited by ICRC. They should also have known that any aerial attack could result in significant civilian harm.
Amnesty also recalls that another detention facility within the same Sa’ada prison compound was hit by a Saudi-led coalition air strike on 21 January 2022, using a US-made precision guided munition, killing more than 90 detainees and injuring dozens.
Any attack that fails to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects on the one hand, and legitimate military targets on the other, even within the same compound, constitutes an indiscriminate attack and a violation of international humanitarian law.