Civilian casualties in Yemen are grotesquely high

James Mattis, the US defence secretary, promised during a press briefing at the Pentagon yesterday, that the US was doing all it could to make sure the number of civilian casualties in Yemen was kept to the minimum. The British government has said the same. Yet their promises are falling on dead ground - ground littered with innocent victims. There is no such thing as a safe war, and no wars have ever been fought without there being civilian fatalities. But in the case of Yemen, the US and Britain, and also France, are providing the means to kill but are not actually participating. Bombs and missiles have UK or US stamped on them, precision weapons sold in multi-billion dollar arms deals with Saudi Arabia and it's these munitions which every day are killing and injuring civilians. The Saudis simply do not share the same "collateral damage" philosophy followed by the UK and US. They are given advice by American and British military advisers but at the end of each day it's the Saudi pilots who press the button to release the bombs. The battleground below is complex. The Islamic Houthi rebels are trying to take over the country and destroy the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi who is in exile. A Saudi-led coalition of more than half a dozen other Arab states launched an air campaign to try and restore the Hadi government. The bombing has been relentless. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Isis have benefited from the chaos that has ensued and are entrenched in the south. They face bombing, too, but by American special operations forces using armed drones. While the slaughter continues, life for the Yemeni people is a constant struggle for survival. The remarks by Mattis yesterday provide small consolation. He said US support for the Saudi-led coalition would continue. The war in Yemen will carry on for years with neither side winning and the casualties will go on and on and on. Yemen used to be a wonderful country. It is now the scene of wholesale killing.