24 die in Yemen market air raid

SANAA // Twenty-four civilians were killed in an air raid yesterday on a market in northern Yemen, a medical official and witnesses said.

Most of the casualties worked in the Mashnaq market in the rebel-controlled Saada province on the Saudi border, an official at a hospital said.

Witnesses said the market was a centre for trafficking in the narcotic plant qat.

Saada has been bombed since 2015, when the coalition intervened to support the govern- ment of Abdrabu Mansur Hadi after Iran-backed Houthis tried to drive him from power.

The Saudi- led coalition – which accuses the rebels of using civilians as human shields – did not comment on the attack. The rebels, who control a string of strategic ports along the Red Sea coastline and the northern highlands that border Saudi Arabia, have sporadically launched rocket attacks across the border into Saudi Arabia, causing many casualties.

In late January, the Houthis attacked a Saudi warship in the Red Sea, killing two sailors.

The coalition carried out an attack on the rebel-held capital Sanaa in last October that targeted a gathering of mourners at a funeral ceremony, killing more than 140 people. An investigation by the coalition blamed an intelligence mistake by the Yemeni military.

More than 8,000 people have been killed in the past two years in the war in Yemen, the World Health Organisation said.