Calls are growing inside the Congress for US efforts over the conflict in Yemen amid reports about high growing civilian death toll from airstrikes.
Lately, congressmen including Debbie Dingell (MI-12), Keith Ellison (MN-05), Ted Lieu (CA-33) sent a letter to President Obama urging greater efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Yemen and achieve a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
The letter followed another deadly attack on a wedding party recently, this time in Dhamar, killing and injuring scores of civilians mostly women and children. The three bridegrooms, all brothers, were killed and Yemeni child Abdullah Al-Sanabani, NASA's global icon for 2012, injured in the strike.
The United States is providing the intelligence and logistical support and supplying weapons and
munitions to the Saudi-led coalition which has been bombing Yemen since March.
The Representatives wrote, “When U.S. weapons and intelligence are utilized, the decision to conduct an airstrike should correspond to the standards that would apply to any U.S. military operation for limiting civilian casualties and collateral damage. Additional precautions to protect civilians are particularly crucial as the State Department has reported thousands of U.S. citizens are still inside Yemen in the absence of an official evacuation.”
More than 2.000 civilians, including at least 500 children, have been killed since the conflict began.
Most of the civilian victims have been killed in Saudi-led airstrikes, according to the UN.
Recently, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, affirmed that only a diplomatic solution will bring a peaceful end to the conflict and reverse the extensive humanitarian crisis in Yemen.