Members of a Saudi-led coalition and allied forces fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen may be guilty of torture, using child soldiers and attacks on civilians that amount to war crimes, a United Nations report said Tuesday, adding to international criticism of the group.
The U.N. report also found that Houthis could be guilty of war crimes due to their blockage of goods into civilian areas, and cited evidence that the rebels tortured detainees and recruited child soldiers.
The Saudi-led coalition referred the U.N. report for review by its legal team, and would take a position following that process, according to a Saudi state television report.
A Houthi representative also said the issue had been sent to the rebels’ legal office for review, but declined further comment.
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The report, by a panel of three experts, focused in part on the U.S.-backed coalition’s airstrikes, which have killed hundreds of civilians. The U.S. supplies many of the precision weapons used in Saudi coalition airstrikes, and provides other limited support, including aerial refueling for coalition jets.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the U.S. hadn’t seen any “callous disregard” by the Saudis toward civilians in Yemen. “Our goal is to reduce this tragedy, and to get it to the U.N.-brokered table as quickly as possible,” Mr. Mattis said.
The coalition—which includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemeni allies—has waged a war against the Houthis since 2015, using a combination of airstrikes and ground forces in a bid to oust the Iran-allied rebels from the Yemeni capital of San’a and restore the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
While the coalition has taken over swaths of Yemeni territory, the Houthis remain in control of San’a and other areas in the north and west. At least 6,660 civilians have been killed in the conflict, according to the U.N., many allegedly from the coalition air campaign.
Other allegations in the report included accusations of sexual violence and severe restrictions on the flow of commercial goods and people through ports and airports. The report, for example, alleged the coalition’s effective closure of the airport in San’a led to the death of the founder of Yemen’s Red Crescent Society last year because he wasn’t able to travel abroad for lifesaving treatment.
“There is little evidence of any attempt by parties to the conflict to minimize civilian casualties,” Kamel Jendoubi, the chairman of the panel, said. “I call on them to prioritize human dignity in this forgotten conflict.”
Anwar Gargash, the U.A.E.’s minister of state for foreign affairs, tweeted that the U.A.E. would review and respond to the report, while highlighting violations by the Houthis.
“Every crisis comes with political and humanitarian challenges, but what is fundamental in the Yemeni crisis is the alliance fulfilling its role in restoring the Yemeni state and securing the region’s future against Iranian trolling,” he said.
As civilian casualties mount, including dozens of children killed in an airstrike that hit a school bus in northern Yemen on Aug. 9, pressure on the coalition has grown from human rights groups, the U.N. and in the U.S., where skepticism is mounting over arms and other support for the Saudi-led war.
American lawmakers worried about the use of American arms in attacks killing civilians have tried several times to reduce support for the war, so far without much success.
The U.N. report comes as talks to end the Yemen war—the first major diplomatic effort since 2016—are set to begin early next month in Geneva, mediated by the U.N.’s Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths.
Already the Arab world’s poorest country before the war, Yemen’s humanitarian situation has worsened over the past several years, leaving many of its provinces on the brink of famine.
An unprecedented cholera epidemic broke out last year, affecting more than a million people, according to World Health Organization estimates. In recent months, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the U.S. has teamed up with the U.K.’s Department for International Development, the U.K.’s national weather service and aid groups to use sophisticated computer models that combine satellite observation with data on local sanitation infrastructure to predict where cholera is likely to break out next.
Those efforts have helped aid groups more swiftly respond to cholera threats, NASA said Tuesday. The U.K.’s national weather service said suspected cholera cases during the last week of June numbered around 2,600, down from more than 50,000 in the same period last year. The agency said other factors, including a late rainy season, could have contributed to the decline in the number of cases, but that the new prediction modeling was helping save lives.
—Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com