“In 2009, when he saw airplanes crossing over the border from Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Jubran Abu Halah was 13 years old. The aircraft started dropping bombs over Saddah, a largely agricultural area in the north of Sa’dah province. Although he says that there was no fighting in the area — neither he nor his family are supporters in any meaningful sense of the Houthi movement — a number of bomblets landed in and around Al Uguum, his village. Sometime after the war ended, his father, a farmer, returned to tend to the family’s land.

“”There was a bomb dropped during the war that fell near my house,” Mohammed said over the phone from Al Uguum, where he still lives. “It looked like a teacup. When my father found it, he didn’t know what it was so he tried to pick it up.”

The bomblet exploded, killing Mohammed’s father and his 4-year-old brother, Yahya; both Mohammed and his mother were hit by shrapnel.

The family received no compensation from the government, and had to foot the bill for treatment at a hospital in Sa’dah city, several hours’ drive away. While Mohammed was in the hospital being treated, the young son of a family friend picked up another bomblet, which neighbors say was the size and shape of a grenade. He was also killed.

“Now 17, Mohammed can do little to help his family. “It hit me in the leg, the thigh, my left hand, and eye,” he says. “Now I can see very little, I am basically blind. I am no use.”” [02]

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