500,000 mines planted by Houthi militias in Yemen

The Houthi-and-Saleh coup militias are continuing to plant land and sea mines amid international silence although the use of mines in conflict is a war crime.
Planting mines is a long-term crime as they usually inflict permanent disabilities and Yemen will have to spend many years to clear these mines because there are no maps showing their exact locations.
The coup militias habitually planted minefields in the battlefield to obstruct the advance of government forces, especially after the liberation of southern governorates, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
Local statistics indicate that hundreds of civilian casualties have been killed and amputated and that the figure is still rising as the war expands into densely-populated areas.
The coup militias planted mines indiscriminately without documented maps, making it very difficult to clear or detect them quickly and easily.
On his part, the Commander of the Military Engineering Division in the 4th Military Region and Director of the National Demining Centre in Aden, Col. Haytham Halaboub said that the coup militias planted various and indiscriminate mines, including prohibited anti-personnel mines and innovative homemade mines as well as anti-tank mines.
He pointed out that the engineering teams managed until May last year to clear more than 31,000 mines that had been planted by the coup militias during the ongoing war in Aden, Lahj and Abyan and parts of Taiz governorate.
Arab Federation for Human Rights in its latest report said that the Houthi coup militias in Yemen had planted more than half a million anti-personnel mines in different parts of Yemen, killing more than 700 people, while engineers who were trained by the Arab Coalition succeeded in the clearance and dismantling of 40,000 mines.
The Yemeni government appealed to the international community to urgently help in the clearance of mines to protect the Yemeni people from their devastating blasts, SPA reported.

Source: BNA