US Withdraws Troops from KSA

Local Editor

The US military had withdrawn from Saudi Arabia its personnel who were coordinating with the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, and sharply reduced the number of staff elsewhere who were assisting in that planning, US officials told reporters.

Fewer than five US service people are now assigned full-time to the "Joint Combined Planning Cell," which was established last year to coordinate US support, including air-to-air refueling of coalition jets and limited intelligence-sharing, Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey, a US Navy spokesman in Bahrain, reports say.

That is down from a peak of about 45 staff members who were dedicated to the effort full-time in Riyadh and elsewhere, he said.

The US military personnel were withdrawn from Riyadh in June, US officials said.

Chris Sherwood, a Pentagon spokesman said that the US aerial tankers continue to refuel Saudi aircraft and that "The JCPC forward team that was in Saudi Arabia is now in Bahrain."

The US has specifically been criticized for providing the Arab monarchy with cluster bombs, illegal bombs in the form of large shell casings that contain hundreds or thousands of bomblets.

The aggression on Yemen brought the country close to famine and cost more than $14 billion [£10.7 billion] in damage to infrastructure and economic losses.

Since the campaign began, the US military had conducted an average of two refueling sorties every day. The United States had also provided limited intelligence support to the coalition but officials stressed that Washington had not selected targets.

However, in recent months, leading humanitarian organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch [HRW] had criticized the coalition air strikes and repeatedly blasted the US for selling the illegal munitions to Saudi Arabia.

They further urged Riyadh to stop using them, as some of the bomblets fail to explode on impact and may go unnoticed for years before killing unsuspecting civilians.

An annual UN report on children and armed conflict said the US-backed Saudi-led coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year.

On Tuesday, a coalition air strike hit a hospital operated by medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres [MSF] in Yemen, killing 19 people and prompting the group to evacuate staff from six hospitals, citing a "loss of confidence in the Saudi-led coalition to prevent fatal attacks".

However, the US had continued its unconditional support for the Saudi regime. In November last year, Washington approved a USD 1.29 billion rearming program for Riyadh.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team