Saudi-led coalition conducts fresh strikes on Yemeni capital

Warplanes belonging to the Saudi-led coalition of invaders have carried out fresh airstrikes on Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a, as the kingdom intensifies the devastating war on its southern neighbor.

Yemen’s al-Masirah TV channel reported on Thursday that Sana’a’s Sabeen residential area had been bombarded at least three times in a few minutes.

In a report early on Thursday, Saudi state TV claimed that the coalition had targeted a Houthi security forces camp in Sana’a and destroyed seven drones and weapons storehouses there.

"The operation in Sana’a is an immediate response after destroying a drone launched towards Jizan," it added, referring to a port city in southwestern Saudi Arabia.

The houses of Yemeni citizens had been damaged in Sana’a during the Saudi air raids, contrary to the coalition’s claim of targeting a military camp, according to the al-Masirah report.

The Ansarullah movement later said in a statement that bombs also fell on a prison compound and a hospital. The prison, it added, houses more than 3,000 coalition mercenaries that were captured in battles.

On Monday, the Saudi-led collation targeted Sana’a airport, which remains a lifeline for Yemenis.

Saudi-led strikes prevent UN aid from reaching Yemenis: Report

Report says Saudi-led airstrikes are preventing delivery of UN-provided relief supplies to Yemen’s lifeline airport.

Yemen’s civil aviation authority had closed the airport on Sunday in protest at the coalition, which maintains a siege on Yemen, refusing to allow “essential” equipment into the facility.

“We said that we need equipment, but the [coalition] started to bomb it instead of sending the required equipment,” an aviation source told the Middle East Eye news portal.

“The airstrikes targeted the tarmac and several buildings in the airport, including the customs department, and a fire broke out.”

The source, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, also said that the aerial assaults have made airport workers feel they are not safe in the facility any longer, adding, “The [coalition] is imposing a siege on Yemen and they don’t care about Yemenis and their interests.”

In a series of tweets, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a high-ranking member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council said the “repeated attacks on Sana'a International Airport, which was prepared to transport Yemeni patients and travelers, are terrorism against the Republic of Yemen.”

"As usual, the United Nations will not take a stand against this crime, I expect, and the coalition will claim that it was not the one who closed the airport, to repudiate the war crime it has committed," he noted.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating military aggression against its southern neighbor in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allied states and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.

The aim was to return to power the former Riyadh-backed regime and crush the popular Ansarullah movement which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.

The war has stopped well shy of all of its goals, despite killing tens of thousands of Yemenis and turning entire Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Meanwhile, Yemeni forces have in recent months gone from strength to strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in Yemen.

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