Pentagon Accidentally Refueled Saudi Jets Over Yemen for Free

Amid a push by the Senate to vote on ending US support for the Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen this week, a new report indicates that American tankers have been refueling Saudi coalition jets with gas paid for by US taxpayers because of “errors in accounting.”

In the letter, one of the Pentagon's top attorneys acknowledges that free refueling services for the Saudi coalition cost more money than he could calculate. While one might think that someone at the 3 million-person organization that is the Pentagon would know exactly how much the US is owed, Castle said in the letter that the department is "currently calculating the correct charges." The Pentagon reached its conclusion following an inquiry sent by Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island who sits as the second most powerful member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Tens of millions of dollars is probably a decent estimate of how much US taxpayers have contributed to the Saudi campaign, according to The Atlantic.

A spokesperson from the Pentagon confirmed the letter's contents and its authenticity to the publication late last week.

A spokesperson for CENTCOM specifically said the command was "still working through the calculation" of how much the Saudi coalition has paid for the refueling services and jet fuel.

Sputnik

Saudi Jets kill several Civilians In Yemen’s Hudaydah

At least 15 Yemenis have been killed in a Saudi airstrike in Hudaydah - Yemen that has become a flashpoint of a war being waged by Riyadh and its allies against the Arab world’s poorest nation.

The fatalities occurred when Saudi planes targeted two buses that were carrying civilians fleeing Hudaydah on Saturday, according to a report by Yemen’s al-Masirah television network.

The attack also injured an unspecified number of others, with the number of fatalities most likely to rise, al-Masirah reported.

No further details about the incident have come out as of yet.

In August, a Saudi air raid hit a school bus as it drove through a market in the town of Dhahyan in Sa’ada Province in northwestern Yemen, killing a total of 51 people, among them 40 children, and injuring 79 others, mostly children.

Hudaydah came under a concerted attack by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in June. The offensive has raised the prospect that the nation could be tipped over the edge of famine as the port city takes in the bulk of Yemen’s vital imports.