On the
morning of October 5, Ali Mohammed “Jubahi” Medarij set out early
from his family home in al-Hayma, a coastal fishing village on the
Red Sea in western Yemen. Every day, the 34-year-old fisherman
traveled 9 miles to a local market — not to sell his catch, but to
look for work.
The father
of five had not taken his boat to sea in months. Eight other
fishermen had already gone missing, presumed dead from attacks by the
Saudi naval blockade. Jubahi had joined the other fisherman and
dragged his boat onto the beach, where it sat idle while he struggled
to support his wife, elderly father, and children.
But on that
fall day, Jubahi’s trip to the market was successful. He returned
in the early afternoon to share a meal with his family, before
wandering down to the beach by himself. According to his father,
Jubahi slipped underneath an overturned boat to escape the afternoon
sun, and — exhausted — closed his eyes to sleep.
He never
woke up.
Villagers in
al-Hayma told The Intercept they heard rumbling around 3 o’clock in
the afternoon. Soon after, they saw a jet from the Saudi-led
coalition circling over the coast. Assisted by the U.S. with weapons
and intelligence, Saudi Arabia has been bombing and blockading Yemen
for 21 months.
“The
warplane was hovering toward the shoreline before I saw something
with parachutes falling down,” said Yahya Qassem Zabah, a local
fisherman. “For a moment I thought that soldiers were landing.
Then I heard a number of explosions soon after that.”
What Zabah
saw was not a soldier parachuting toward the coast, it was a cluster
weapon. In mid-air, its shell casing opened and released
cylinder-shaped bomblets, which scattered as they plummeted to the
beach.
All at once,
like deafening firecrackers, explosions ripped across the sand,
splintering, smashing, and overturning fishing boats.
Jubahi’s
family found his body among the wreckage in a pool of his own blood.
His head had been struck by one of the munitions while he slept.
“There was a hole in his head with blood spilled underneath,”
Jubahi’s father, Mohammed Omar Medarij, told The Intercept before
bursting into tears.
The
villagers recovered two empty shell casings and three parachutes,
which Jubahi’s family kept as evidence and showed to The Intercept.
“They took out my son and left these rags behind,” Medarij
said, gesturing toward the parachutes.
It was not
the first time the villagers had seen such weapons. In December 2015,
Human Rights Watch confirmed that coalition warplanes dropped CBU-105
cluster bombs on al-Hayma, damaging multiple homes and seriously
injuring at least two civilians.
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