CAMPAIGN IN YEMEN

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30178, 9 July 1963, Page 13

CAMPAIGN IN YEMEN

‘Egypt Using Gas On Civilians’

(N.Z Preu Association—Copvngnt* LONDON, July 8.

/ Egypt is using poison gas against the civilian population of northern Yemen, according to a report in today’s “Daily Telegraph” by a special correspondent, Richard Beeston.

“I have seen the tragic proof of this fact in the small Yemeni mountain village of Al Kawma,” he said. Seven people in the village had already died and 25 were facing a lingering death from the effects of the

gas attack.

For the last few months there had been reports about Egyptian aircraft dropping gas over the Yemen and these reports were true, the “Daily Telegraph” said.

President Nasser could how claim the distinction of being the first person to employ chemical warfare since Mussolini used mustard gas on Ethiopian tribesmen in the 1930'5. The use of gas was in defiance of the Geneva Conventions. “I have seen the blisters and disfigurements of the villagers whose skins have been contaminated by the gas. I have heard their pitful coughings, caused by their

damaged lungs and seen the remains of the gas bomb dropped by an Egyptian aircraft,” Beeston’s report said. The gas bomb had been dropped on the village early last month, giving off a cloud of brown smoke which had a “dirty smell” and affecting

a third of Al Kawma’s popu lation.

The remains of the bomb were a complicated piece of machinery, probably beyond the engineering capabilities of the Egyptians and it was likely the bomb had been manufactured in Russia or Czechoslovakia, the newspaper said..

“In my journey to Al Kawma, Egyptian Ilyushin bombers were constantly overhead bombing and strafing Royalist Yemeni villages,” Beeston said. The fact that President Nasser should flout the Geneva Conventions could be interpreted as a measure of his desperation to finish the Yemeni war, which had tied down 28,000 of his troops. “The use of gas warfare is employment of terror tactics against defenceless civilians after the Egyptian failure to inflict a military defeat on the Royalist forces,” the “Daily Telegraph” report said.