News / Yemen

6 civilians dead, 7 injured as Saudi warplanes hit Yemen’s Sa’ada

Monday, 05 February 2018 1:31 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 05 February 2018 6:49 PM ]

Boys look at the picture of a relative on his grave at a graveyard for fighters of the Houthi Ansarullah movement in Sa’ada, Yemen, on January 30, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

At least six civilians have been killed when Saudi military aircraft carried out a string of airstrikes in Yemen's northwestern province of Sa’ada as the Saudi regime presses ahead with an atrocious military campaign against its crisis-hit southern neighbor.

Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said six people lost their lives and seven others sustained injuries on Monday afternoon, when Saudi fighter jets struck two vehicles in the al-Qatinat area of Baqim district, Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.

The development came shortly after scores of Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to Yemen's resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, were killed and injured when Yemeni army forces fired a domestically-manufactured ballistic missile at their base on the western coast of the country.

A Yemeni military source, requesting not to be named, said Yemeni soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees launched a Qaher 2-M (Subduer 2-M) missile at the base.

This file photo shows a domestically designed and manufactured Qaher 2-M (Subduer 2-M) missile in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a. (Photo by the media bureau of Yemen’s Joint Operations Command Center)

Earlier in the day, Yemeni soldiers and their allies had fired a short-range ballistic missile towards King Faisal Air Base in Khamis Mushait city of the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Asir.

The missile reportedly hit its target accurately and left massive destruction at the air base.

There were no immediate comments from Saudi officials on the missile attack.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen in 2015. Much of the country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization’s latest tally, the cholera outbreak has killed 2,167 people since the end of April 2017 and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

An infant suffering from malnutrition is weighed and measured at a medical center in Bani Hawat, on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sana’a, on January 25, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

In November 2017, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said more than 11 million children in Yemen were in acute need of aid, stressing that it was estimated that every 10 minutes a child died of a preventable disease there.

Additionally, the UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people were food insecure in the country.

The world body says that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.

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