The coalition of Arab states fighting against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have denounced as inaccurate and biased a report by UN human rights experts that said some of its air strikes may amount to war crimes.
The experts' report, released a day earlier, said that the bombardment has caused heavy civilian casualties, raising concerns about the coalition's targeting process, while severe restrictions on Red Sea ports and Sanaa airport had deprived Yemenis of vital supplies.
The panel said Houthi fighters may also be guilty of war crimes, accusing them of restricting access for humanitarian aid and conscripting child soldiers.
The Houthis, who control the capital and most of the west of the country, regularly fire missiles on southern Saudi Arabia and occasionally aim for higher-value targets, such as the capital Riyadh or facilities of state oil company Aramco.
"The report had several methodological fallacies and misconstrued the facts of the conflict ... ignoring the true reasons for the conflict which are the coup of the Iran-backed Houthi militias against the legitimate government in Yemen," said a statement published by the Saudi state news agency SPA.
Saudi Arabia is leading a Western-backed alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab states trying to restore the internationally recognised government of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, ousted from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in 2015.
The report was the first United Nations investigation into possible war crimes in Yemen although international human rights groups have regularly documented abuses. It was released ahead of UN peace talks between Hadi's government and the Houthis scheduled for Sept. 6 in Geneva.
The coalition said it would provide a "comprehensive and detailed legal response" at a later time. It rejected the report's assertion that it had not cooperated or provided information to the panel.
The experts said they did not examine the United States and Britain, who supply weapons and intelligence to the alliance, or Iranian support for the Houthis, but other UN bodies were doing so. They urged all states to restrict arms sales to help end the war.
The United Nations considers Yemen to be facing the most urgent humanitarian crisis in the world, with millions of people potentially facing starvation if the war disrupts supply lines needed to bring in aid.
The war has so far garnered relatively little public attention in Western countries, but there are signs that is starting to change, particularly because of the role Western governments play supplying arms to the coalition countries.
