U.N. Report Says Saudi-Led Coalition Attacked Migrant Boat Off Yemen<br />By SOMINI SENGUPTAJULY 26, 2017<br />UNITED NATIONS — A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia<br />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.<br />The fatal shots were probably fired from a machine gun or minigun, a type of rotary machine gun, on a helicopter "most likely<br />operating from a naval vessel," the panel wrote in its 185-page confidential report to the United Nations Security Council.<br />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<br />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.<br />The report paints a harrowing picture of what happened on the night of March 16 as a boat packed with<br />up to 145 people, mostly Somalis, was sailing across the Red Sea, away from the Yemeni coast.<br />First, rockets were fired, and then, sustained gunfire from either a "medium machine<br />gun or minigun of 7.62 mm caliber mounted on a helicopter," according to the report.<br />The Saudi-led coalition has such weapons, according to the panel, and so do many of the warships in the Red Sea<br />that belong to what is called a combined maritime force, which includes ships from Britain, Canada and the United States.
