Tribal leaders claim air strikes in the north slaughter 20
SANAA: Air strikes blamed on a Saudi-led coalition fighting Shia rebels in Yemen hit a busy market and a bus in the country’s north, killing at least 20 people, including children, Yemeni tribal leaders said yesterday.
As many as 35 were also wounded in the attack, which took place in the Dahyan district in Saada province, a stronghold of Houthi rebels, the elders said. The province lies along the border with Saudi Arabia.
The air strikes hit pedestrians in the area of the attack and struck a bus that was ferrying civilians, including school children, the elders said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
There was no immediate comment from the Saudi-led coalition, which is fighting to restore Yemen’s internationally recognised government to power. The Saudi coalition has been at war with the Houthis since March 2015. The rebels control much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed on Twitter that an ICRC supported hospital received dozens of dead and wounded following the attack.
“Scores killed, even more injured, most under the age of 10,” the head of the ICRC in Yemen, Johannes Bruwer, said on his Twitter account, adding that the ICRC in Yemen is “sending additional supplies to hospitals to cope with the influx”.
The rebel-run Al Masirah TV gave a different casualty toll, saying the attack killed 39 people and wounded 51, mainly children.
Sounds of blasts from air strikes that hit Sanaa reverberated across its southern and western neighbourhoods yesterday. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in those strikes.
Yemen’s stalemated, three-year war
has killed more than 10,000 people, badly damaged Yemen’s infrastructure and crippled its health system. The coalition faces widespread international criticism for its air strikes in Yemen that kill civilians.
Impoverished Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is now in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance.
Last week, Yemeni medical officials said the coalition conducted air strikes in the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, killing at least 28 people and wounding 70. But the coalition denied carrying out any attacks in the city, saying it follows a “strict and transparent approach based on the rules international law”.
Hodeida, a key lifeline for supplies and aid for Yemen’s population on the brink of starvation, has become the latest battleground in the devastating war.
The Iran-aligned Houthis regularly fire into Saudi Arabia and have targeted its capital, Riyadh, with ballistic missiles. They say their missile attacks on the kingdom are in retaliation for air raids on Yemen by the Western-backed coalition.
On Wednesday, the Saudi Press Agency carried a statement by the Saudi-led coalition saying fragments of a missile fired by the Houthis into the kingdom’s south killed one civilian and wounded 11.
The coalition said the projectile, fired toward the southwestern Saudi city of Jizan, was intercepted and destroyed. It also said the missile was launched “deliberately to target residential and populated areas”.
The UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has been pushing to bring the warring parties to restart peace talks. He recently announced plans to invite Yemen’s warring parties to Geneva on Sept 6 to hold the first round of consultations.