At least four women have been killed in an airstrike by Saudi Arabia against Yemen’s northwestern province of Hajjah.
On Friday, Saudi warplanes pounded an area in the Harad district of the province, located approximately 130 kilometers (80 miles) northwest of the capital, Sana’a, killing the four women, Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television network reported.
Saudi military aircraft also carried out 10 aerial attacks against Aqan district in the southwestern Yemeni province of Lahij; but there were no immediate reports on possible casualties and the extent of damage inflicted.
Saudi warplanes conducted a number of airstrikes on Yemen’s western province of Hudaydah late on Thursday, killing an unknown number of civilians.
Saudi jets also bombarded the northwestern and mountainous province of Sa’ada, killing at least one civilian there.
Retaliation
Additionally, Yemeni army soldiers backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees targeted Saudi forces in al-Khobe district of Saudi Arabia’s Jizan region. No reports on fatalities or possible damage were immediately available.
The developments come as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien has demanded an end to the conflict in Yemen, saying, “The dialogue of weapons needs to be replaced by the dialogue of words. There is no military solution to this conflict.”
“What we need is peace,” he added, saying that the international community must step up its measure to help the provision of critical aid to Yemeni people.
On March 26, Saudi Arabia began its military aggression against Yemen – without a UN mandate – in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, an ally of Riyadh.
The UN says the conflict in Yemen has killed over 4,000 people, nearly half of them civilians, since late March. Local Yemeni sources, however, put the fatality figure at much higher.