Cable reveals US behind airstrike that killed 21 children in Yemen
Eric W. Dolan
Raw Story
Dec 3, 2010
A diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks shows that the US military covered up the killing of dozens of civilians during a cruise missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009.
The secret cable from January 2010 corroborated images released earlier this year by Amnesty International, implicating the US in the use of cluster bombs. The cable was sent by Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh to US General David Petraeus, saying his government would “continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”
Read it Raw: WikiLeaks.org domain taken down, DNS host cites ‘mass attacks’
According to the cable, this prompted Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi “to joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG [Republic of Yemen Government].”
“The cable appears to confirm Amnesty International’s finding that the Abyan strike was carried out by the US military, not Yemeni government forces,” Philip Luther, a Deputy Director for Amnesty International, said.
Full article here