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Saudi airstrikes kill 21 in southwest Yemen

Saturday, 29 October 2016 5:14 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 29 October 2016 10:35 AM ]

Yemeni medics and rescue workers carry a body on a stretcher amid the rubble at a site targeted in Saudi airstrikes in Sana’a, October 8, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Saudi Arabian warplanes have bombed areas in the southwestern Yemeni provinces of Ta’izz and Sa’ada, killing at least 21 people.

One of the Saturday attacks targeted the As Silw district in Ta’izz, killing at least 16 people, Yemen’s al-Masirah television network reported.

Early reports had said that at least three women were among those killed.

Another Saudi airstrike in the Bani Sayyah district of Sa’ada Province killed five people, including a child.

Saudi aircraft also targeted the Nihm district in the Sana’a Province in west-central Yemen and another location in the Shabwah Province in the impoverished country’s south.

Separately, a blast was reported at a checkpoint in the Crater district in the southwestern province of Aden, leaving at least three people dead. The details of the attack are yet to be announced.

Saudi Arabia has been waging war on Yemen since March 2015. The war was launched in an unsuccessful attempt to reinstate Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who has resigned as Yemen’s president.

The war has killed at least 10,000 people, amid countless reports suggesting the deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of civilian infrastructure by Saudi forces and mercenaries.

A Saudi embargo produces a famine, hunger & harrowing images of malnourished Yemenis

A Saudi-imposed naval embargo of Yemen, which is the Arab world’s poorest nation, has also led to a famine across much of the country.

An 18-year-old Yemeni woman lies in bed at the al-Thawra hospital where she is receiving treatment for severe malnutrition on the outskirts of the Yemeni port city of al-Hudaidah, October 25, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

On Friday, the United Nations (UN) aid agencies said that around 1.5 million children in Yemen were malnourished and half of the population, that is more than 13 million people, lived in hunger.

Three days earlier, harrowing pictures had emerged of an 18-year-old Yemeni woman lying in bed at a hospital on the outskirts of the Yemeni port city of al-Hudaidah with severe malnutrition.

The Middle East Eye news portal reported on Thursday that Saudi Arabian and Qatari army chiefs had met with their Algerian counterpart earlier in the month, asking Algiers to send its servicemen to Yemen. Riyadh had previously tried and failed to recruit Pakistan and Lebanon in the offensive.

Some observers say the war has cost Saudi Arabia so much in terms of financial and political capital that it seeks to diminish its own role while enlisting the services of allies to gradually fill in its shoes.

Riyadh has already been hit by a worsening economic crisis due to a sharp fall in oil prices, itself a result of the policies of the Saudi regime.

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