US Missile Fragment Found in Rubble of Saudi Airstrike in Yemen
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A US weapons manufacturer’s missile component discovered among the debris after the Saudi-led coalition's catastrophic airstrikes on the Yemeni city of Saada on Friday.
The January 21 attack on a migrant detention facility in Yemen’s Saada claimed several dozen lives, including those of a number of children, and prompted UN General Secretary António Guterres to call for an “effective and transparent investigation.”
Video footage filmed in the aftermath of the airstrike by Yemeni media showed distressing scenes of rescue workers removing bodies from the rubble, RT reported.
At one point, a fragment allegedly from a lethal weapon used in the raid is shown, with part of its identifying text and numbers visible.
“That’s the manufacturer cage code for Raytheon,” Marc Garlasco, a military adviser from the Netherlands-based PAX Protection of Civilians NGO wrote on Twitter, referring to the US’ Raytheon Technologies Corporation, one of the world’s largest aerospace and intelligence services suppliers.
Raytheon describes itself on its website as being focused on “creating breakthrough technologies in fields such as artificial intelligence, advanced propulsion, electrification, and thermal management.” Its list of cage codes includes the number 96214, which matches that seen on the fragment found in Saada.
A CNN investigation also listed the same Raytheon cage code found on shrapnel after coalition airstrikes in Yemen in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
This is not the first time that bomb fragments from American-made weapons have been discovered among the rubble in Yemen. The US has continued to supply weapons and logistical and intelligence support to Saudi Arabia, despite numerous calls from human rights organizations to cease its exports.
In August 2018, a Yemeni journalist identified missile fragments found after an attack on a bus carrying children as having derived from a Raytheon Mark 82 general-purpose free-fall bomb.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
The Saudi-led coalition has recently intensified airstrikes in Yemen.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
