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By Alex Crawford, special correspondent

A Sky News investigation has exclusively pieced together the harrowing final few moments before a family was massacred in northern Yemen. 

A total of nine people were killed in the airstrike 鈥� all of them women and children.

The evidence has finally led to the Saudi-led coalition admitting for the first time it made a mistake and the missile did not hit its intended military target because of "bad weather". 

A UN report today demands answers about the deadly airstrike, largely drawing  on the Sky team's detailed reporting of the incident.

Based on eyewitness testimony and the evidence of the survivors who we tracked down,鈥痺e've put together a timeline of events and recreated what happened inside the family's home in the minutes before it was hit.鈥� 

Our investigation details just where everyone was when the attack happened on 12 July 2020 - and what they were doing when the missile struck the village of Washah with such deadly impact.鈥� 

The village is in a beautiful but inhospitable mountainous area. Simple stone homes are scattered across a rocky hillside.

People in Washah have described to us in detail the layout of the targeted home. The scene inside was one of typical Yemeni domesticity.

On the day of the attack, the matriarch of the extended Mujali family, 55-year-old Juma'a, was busy inside with her two daughters-in-law. Their partners - her sons - were outside the village working.鈥�

The meal being served was modest food, a simple but popular dish of mainly rice with vegetables and鈥� khobz 鈥�(Arabic flat bread).

Our investigation began last September when we were the first independent journalists and only outsiders to reach Washah after the attack.

It was a long and arduous drive through dry river beds and up rocky paths 鈥� and a final climb on foot.鈥� 

About 80% of Yemen's population is suffering and in need of outside help. The people in Washah are definitely among them.

It's a remote community, close to the Saudi border, with no running water and limited electricity. Some families have found a few solar panels to provide power.

In the aftermath of the bombing, the witnesses who rushed to the site told us they did not expect to find any survivors. The home had been almost entirely levelled.鈥�

They told us of mutilated bodies and multiple body parts - some blown on to neighbours' roofs or laying in nearby backyards.

Mrs Mujali, the matriarch of the family who'd been serving lunch was identified by her barely recognisable torso. They never found the rest of her body.鈥�

Much of the debris and detritus of the house were still scattered around when we visited.

There were babies' clothes and toys alongside broken solar panels, multiple kitchen paraphernalia and pieces of shrapnel from the bomb.

How鈥痑nyone鈥痵urvived is a miracle. Certainly, a crew unleashing a missile on that small structure would not have expected anyone to emerge alive.鈥� 

Noura, Mrs Mujali's daughter-in-law, who'd taken herself and her baby, Qanas, to one of the back bedrooms to breastfeed him, survived because of her last-minute decision.

The missile landed on the opposite side of the house. She and her baby escaped with slight shrapnel wounds.

As she screamed for help, struggling through the rubble and smoke clasping Qanas, she saw her two older daughters. Now dead.鈥�

The other survivor, Mrs Mujali's 14-year-old son, Ghazi told us the last memory he has of that horrifying day, when most of his family were obliterated, is of flicking through the television channels.

Ghazi spent nearly two months in hospital recovering from his burns and shrapnel wounds and learning to walk again.

But his memory stops at the final second just before the bomb exploded.鈥� 

His older relatives who now care for him, say it's fortunate he can't remember anything more. Their own memories are still so searingly raw, they wept recounting what happened. They're likely to be suffering from the trauma of what they saw for many years to come.鈥�

They found Ghazi buried under piles of heavy stones. The door to his room had been blown over him. That protected him from the rubble which then rained on top. He was bleeding, badly burned and covered in ash and dust.

As they were trying to pull him to safety, the jet circled menacingly above. They were terrified another missile was heading their way. This went on for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes of sheer terror, stepping over severed hands and feet and finding their toddler cousins crushed to death.

Later, after the jet's departure, they gathered body parts in plastic bags so they could mourn them, and bury them. A final dignity for the dead from people who loved them.

They wrapped the children in blankets for burial, and they took photographs. They are heartbreaking images. Their clothes soaked in blood. Their eyes closed. Their faces cloaked in the grey-white mask of death. Young people who were born into war, lived all their lives through war and who died at the hands of unseen bombers.

The initial response from the coalition to inquiries about the airstrike did not even confirm its aircraft were flying in the area at the time. A spokesman did say it was conducting an investigation into the possibility of an "accidental loss of civilian life" while targeting Houthi rebel leaders. In September, they told us they were still carrying out inquiries.  

By then we had tracked down the survivors, spoken to them and multiple witnesses - as well as carrying out a thorough search of the area.  

The day before broadcasting this latest evidence, the coalition responded to our inquiries admitting for the first time it had bombed the wrong house. It blamed poor weather for the mistake which ended up wiping out most of the Mujali family. 

The intended military target was apparently nearly 800m away from the Mujali family home in a completely separate area called Beit al Qateeb. 

The statement went on to say: "The joint forces believe that the bomb did not hit the target due to the intermittent clouds over the target area 15 seconds after the bomb was fired,鈥痺hich impacted the response of the laser-guided bomb before landing on the military target." 

The statement concluded the coalition countries should offer "aid" to the remaining survivors of the Mujali family and there was a recommendation to study what had gone wrong with the missile to learn why it had landed on the wrong house.

The coalition was aware of our investigation and were no doubt similarly aware of an imminent United Nations report into the airstrike, which has largely drawn on our detailed reporting of the incident. 

We used satellite imagery to locate five airbases nearby to the Mujali family house over the border in Saudi Arabia. 

Our examination of satellite images of the nearest base, King Khalid, suggests there was F15 jet activity there between June and August 2020.  

We collected shrapnel, and also viewed parts with identifying markings gathered and photographed by neighbours immediately after the attack.鈥� 

Weapons experts we consulted told us the fragments found seem to be part of a GBU-12, 500lb fin-guided bomb, manufactured in America and commonly used in the five-year long coalition bombing campaign in Yemen. 

According to the US military's own analysis, the GBU-12 is an "exceptional weapon" which hits 88% of its targets.

The Gulf Kingdom of Saudi Arabia heads the coalition of nations and is backed by Britain, America and the United Arab Emirates.

The coalition has been propping up Yemen's internationally-recognised government, which Houthi rebels attempted to鈥痷nseat in 2014. That move ignited Yemen's civil war.

The five-year long conflict has morphed into a proxy war, with the Houthis receiving funding and support from their foreign backers, primarily Iran. The Houthis have managed to seize control of most of the north of Yemen - and the conflict has drawn allegations of war crimes on both sides.鈥� 

Millions of ordinary Yemenis are caught in the middle and thousands have been killed, with the coalition repeatedly accused of bombing 鈥痗ivilian infrastructure 鈥痵uch as homes, schools and hospitals.

The Houthis 鈥� on the other hand -鈥痺ho rely on sophisticated drones -鈥痑re constantly accused of recruiting children to fight, the indiscriminate shelling of civilian homes and the use of land mines鈥痺hich have killed and maimed thousands.鈥� 

Most of the attacks are difficult to investigate because the country is largely sealed off to outsiders and independent journalists. It's also cut in two by the warring factions and riddled with multiple armed and rival checkpoints making it riAG百家乐在线官网 to travel around.鈥� 

The most accurate information is obtained from first-hand, face-to-face questioning. We did just that, speaking to dozens of Washah's residents, gathering their contemporaneous imagery on their mobile phones and matching these accounts with footage filmed by activists.

We sent team members back to the site to speak to more witnesses to get a detailed account of what happened inside that house when the missile hit.鈥� 

Attacking a civilian target either deliberately or by accident is considered an international war crime.

Following Sky's reports, UN investigators have written to Saudi Arabia asking for more information about the incident and are awaiting a reply.

Their report says the house "is in an isolated position in a rural area, thus the chances of hitting the house by accident appear to be low".

The Mujali family was desperately poor and illiterate. They are just one family among thousands ripped apart and killed in this proxy war.

The powerful, rich, strong nations who paid for, enabled and directed the bomb which landed on the Mujali home by mistake that day may reasonably have gambled no one would care about their massacre.

They may have reasonably deduced no one would survive to detail what happened. They may have reasonably thought, given all the restrictions and danger, no one would be able to investigate and gather multiple testimony, shrapnel and footage of the crime scene. They gambled wrong.鈥� 

The surviving relatives, and the Washah residents who witnessed it, are now demanding justice for the Mujali family. They want someone - and all those nations responsible for this massacre - to be held accountable.

Credits:

Writing and reporting: Alex Crawford, special correspondent

Location producers: Zein Ja'far, Middle East editor; Ahmed Baider, producer

Cameraman: Kevin Sheppard

Data and forensics unit: Adam Parker, Philip Whiteside, Matthew Price and Natasha Muktarsingh

Graphics: Taylor Stuart, designer; Sam Wright, senior CG artist; Luke Scarborough, junior motion designer

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.