At least seven civilians have been killed when Saudi military aircraft carried out airstrikes against a residential area in Yemen’s northern province of al-Jawf as the Riyadh regime presses ahead with its atrocious bombardment campaign against its southern neighbor.
Saudi fighter jets conducted two aerial assaults against the house of Ali bin Hussein bin Ashal in the Salbah area of Khabb wa ash Sha'af district on Thursday evening, leaving seven people dead, unnamed local sources told Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network.
The sources added that the victims were all members of a single family, and that there were women and children among the deceased.
Meanwhile, one of the cameramen of Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Sahat television network lost his life while filing a report on the damage caused by Saudi Arabia’s devastating aerial bombardment campaign in the country’s western coastal province of Hudaydah.
Abdullah al-Montaser was reporting from Hays district when Saudi fighter jets struck the area.
Additionally, Yemeni army forces, supported by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have launched an operation against Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to Yemen's resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, in the Yatmen area of Jawf province.
The offensive left scores of the Saudi mercenaries dead and injured. A number of them were arrested as well.
A Yemeni military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Yemeni troops and their allies also managed to wrest full control over several areas, namely Wadi Salbah, Jebel Habash, Jabal Kahal, Wadi Qa’if, Jabal Hamr al-Sayd, Jabal Hamr al-Dhayab and Tawathena.
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.
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.