Rights group accuses Saudi-UAE alliance of covering up war crimes in Yemen

n international rights group said the Saudi Arabia-United Arab Emirates (UAE) alliance fighting Shiite rebels in Yemen has failed to redress civilian victims and conduct credible investigations into alleged war crimes committed there.

Friday's 90-page report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Saudi-led coalition's "sham investigations" have fallen short of "international standards regarding transparency, impartiality, and independence," according to The Associated Press (AP).

"For more than two years, the coalition has claimed that JIAT [its investigative body] was credibly investigating allegedly unlawful air strikes, but the investigators were doing little more than covering up war crimes," HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement. Whitson also noted that countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia aren't protected from "being complicit in serious violations in Yemen."

Civilians were killed in western Yemen on Thursday in a missile strike for which the Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition fighting them traded blame. The rebel-run Saba News Agency said women and children were among at least 31 people killed or wounded in an air strike that hit a bus and a home in the Al-Durayhimi district, south of the strategic port city of Hodeida.

But the UAE, a key partner in the Saudi-led coalition, claimed that the Houthis launched a "ballistic [missile] made in Iran."