Al Mukalla: On Tuesday, Rabyia Ali Shalfat was driving his two wives, daughter and a number of relatives in a remote area in the desert district of Khab and Al Sha’af in the northern province Jawf. His car stepped on a landmine, causing an explosion that claimed the lives of his two wives and daughter and injured several others.
Residents told Gulf News that the landmine was planted by Al Houthi fighters when they were in control of the area to slow down government forces’ advances. The area were liberated last year and despite combing many liberated areas searching for the thousands of landmines planted by rebels, the poorly equipped demining trams of Yemen army did not pick up the landmine that killed Shalfat’s family.
“They planted landmines everywhere. Nomads and shepherds pay a heavy price for criss-crossing the areas,” Abdul Hadi Al Asar, the director of the provincial office of ministry of human rights in Jawf, told Gulf News on Thursday. Shalfat is an example of hundreds of Yemenis inside liberated areas who lost their lives due to Al Houthi’s arbitrary planting of landmines on former battlefields.
Unable to confront the better-equipped government forces, the Al Houthi militia and renegade army units loyal to the ousted president turn to insurgency tactics such as laying the ground with landmines and deploying snipers to gun down explosive experts. Several months ago, an entire family perished in the desert of Jawf when a landmine ripped through their car. “The desert and unpaved roads have become death traps. We urge the legitimate government to send sappers to the desert to defuse landmines or at least install signboards.” Al Asar said.
In the neighbouring province of Marib, Mohammad Al Qubati, the director of the government-run Marib hospital, told Gulf News that the hospital receives victims of Al Houthi landmines daily. “They come from battlefields in Marib, Jawf and Shabwa or from some recently liberated areas,” Al Qubati said. “Most of the victims are nomads and some of them lose their legs.”
The internationally-recognised government, which is based in the port city of Aden, says that it’s demining teams cannot reach all liberated areas in Yemen not because of shortage of experts and equipment, but due to randomly planted landmines. Local army commanders say that even Al Houthi fighters who are captured on the front fail to locate landmines. Civilians will continue to suffer until the international community pressure the rebels to stop planting the landmines.
Last week, an army officer from Taiz told Gulf News that the government sappers defused more than 1,800 mines from a silver of liberated land near the Red Sea Mokha.
Local and international right groups have repeatedly blasted the Al Houthi movement for indiscriminately planting landmines on the battlefields. Human Right Watch in April accused the Al Houthi-Saleh alliance of violating human rights by using banned anti-personnel landmines that have killed and injured hundreds of civilians and prevented internally displaced people from returning home. Landmine casualty figures usually come from local human right groups. In April, the Yemeni Coalition for Monitoring Human Right Violations, an alliance of local NGOs that document abuses and war crimes in Yemen, said that 610 people including 101 children and 26 women have been killed by the Al Houthi landmines since the early days of their rapid expansion in late 2014. The number of the injured reached 928, including 160 children and 36 women.
