Air raids kill more than 10 in Yemen

Airstrikes killed more than 10 civilians including children in a market in Yemen’s northern Saada province on Monday, a medical source and Houthi-run media reported, says Reuters.

The manager of the local Al Jomhouri hospital said 13 people were killed and 23 injured in airstrikes in Qatabir district by a Saudi-led coalition battling the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen. Al Masirah TV said more than 10 civilians were killed.

“There are two children among the martyrs and 11 children among those injured,” hospital manager Saleh Qorban told Reuters.

Pictures taken by a Reuters photographer showed more than nine bodies, some of them torn apart, lined up on a nylon sheet near the morgue.

The spokesman for the coalition did not immediately respond to a request for comment and there was no confirmation from the alliance or Saudi authorities.

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Saudi Arabia is leading the Western-backed Sunni Muslim alliance that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognised government, which was ousted from power in the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in late 2014.

The movement has stepped up missile and drone attacks on Saudi cities, and the coalition has responded with airstrikes on Houthi targets, mostly around Sanaa.

In August 2018, coalition airstrikes killed dozens of people, including children traveling on a bus through a market in Saada. The alliance initially said it had targeted missile launchers but later admitted that the attack was unjustified.

Human rights groups have criticized Western countries that provide arms and intelligence to the coalition over airstrikes that have killed civilians at hospitals, schools, and markets. The coalition says it does not intentionally target civilians.

The four-year-old war, that has killed tens of thousands and pushed the long-impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation to the brink of famine, has long been in a military stalemate.

The Houthis, who say their revolution is against corruption, control Sanaa and most of the main urban centres. The government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi holds the southern port of Aden.

The violence could complicate efforts to implement a UN-sponsored troop withdrawal agreement in the main port city of Hudaydah that is meant to pave the way for peace talks to end the conflict, which is largely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

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