Undeclared support for airstrikes on Yemen drags UK deeper into US war

As 70 people are killed in an attack on a migrant centre in Sa'ada, an Observer analysis shows that British involvement in Trump's military action is deeper than ministers have admitted, reports Iona Craig

- Iona Craig

Trapped on his side between two large slabs of concrete, a man stares into the camera. He murmurs some-thing inaudible. The camera doesn't dwell. Panning to the left in the semi-light of early dawn in northern Yemen, another survivor is trapped up to his waist. To the right, a lifeless body. A man face-down in the rubble with two corpses alongside. A head lifts. The man cries out. A dust-cov-ered mattress is dragged out of the rubble to use as a makeshift stretcher. He's pulled out, still face down.

At six minutes into the footage, the crater left by the US airstrike becomes visible. A contorted body is almost camouflaged amid the debris on the crater's edge. By 24 minutes in, the count is at least 26 bodies caught on camera. The sun has risen over Sa'ada, a city that was devastated by some of the heaviest bombing on my last visit there during Saudi Arabia's air war, and the flies are already start-ing to descend on the dead. The crowd of first responders and other Yemenis has grown to more than two dozen. At 33 minutes, bomb fragments are laid out for the camera.

The American airstrike on a migrant detention facility in Sa'ada, Yemen on 28 April was the 278th since US president Donald Trump launched a new bombing campaign against Yemen's Houthis, the Iran-backed group that controls the most densely populated part of the country, on 15 March. At least 68 civilians, mostly African migrants, were reportedly killed and a further 47 injured, bringing the toll of civilian deaths in US strikes on Yemen to 237 since mid-March, according to figures collected by the conflict monitor Yemen Data Project. In a statement marking the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, the US Department of Defense claimed last week that strikes had hit a thousand Houthi targets.