Saudi-led air strikes killed at least 80 people near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia and in the capital Sana’a on Wednesday, residents said, the deadliest day of bombing in over two months of war in Yemen.
The air raids on the Bakeel al-Meer area in Hajjah province across Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen killed at least 40 people, most of them civilians, local inhabitants said.
“Huthi gunmen were attacking Saudi border positions from this area but the coalition’s planes failed to hit the fighters and bombed civilians [instead],” one resident told Reuters by telephone.
Saudi ground forces Tribesmen aligned with the Huthis have been fighting Saudi ground forces in the area, and border clashes have escalated the conflict between the Shia Muslim rebels and the coalition of Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states.
Several hours later, air strikes on a special forces base allied with the Huthis in Sana’a, the Huthi-run state news agency Saba said, in an account confirmed by residents.
“Around 40 people were martyred and more than 100 were wounded, according to a preliminary toll, in bombing by the Saudi planes on the Sabaaeen area in the capital Sana’a today,” the Saba dispatch said.
A Yemeni soldier who survived the attack said the raid hit a warehouse where soldiers and Huthi militiamen were receiving their weapons. “So far we’re not sure how many are dead,” the soldier told Reuters.
Arab warplanes and ships hammered Yemen’s largest military port in the Red Sea city of Hodeida at dawn on Wednesday, a local official said, the most serious attack on the country’s navy in over two months of war.
Hodeida and its military bases are aligned with the Huthis, the most powerful force in Yemen’s complex conflict, which also involves southern secessionist militia, local tribal forces and Islamist militants such as al-Qaeda’s regional wing. “The naval base was bombed by aircraft and ships. Large parts of it were destroyed and two warships were hit, and one of them, named the Bilqis, was destroyed and sank onto its side, and five gunboats shelled the administrative buildings of the base,” the official told Reuters by telephone from Hodeida.
