Local Editor
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has led a UK and US-backed military coalition against Houthi Ansarullah revolutionaries ... in Yemen, with the aim of reinstating the fugitive president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who escaped to Riyadh.
Houthi fighters control Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, and have spread across the country. They are allied with the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012.
Saudis have repeatedly characterised Houthis as Iranian proxies - a charge Tehran has vehemently denied. The Saudi-led coalition has carried out multiple airstrikes that have resulted in civilian casualties. Houthis have retaliated by firing missiles across the border.
More than 6,000 people have been killed since the conflict began - half of them civilians and more than 1,100 of them children, according to the UN. Here is a timeline of six major bombardments in Yemen this year by the Saudi-led coalition.
13 January
An airstrike killed at least 15 civilians near the village of Bilad al-Rus, south of Sana’a. More than 25 other people were wounded. ...
27 February
Coalition jets bombarded a crowded market in the Nehm district of Sana’a, killing at least 40 people, mostly civilians. At least 30 people were also reported to have been wounded.
15 March
The bombing of a potato crisp factory in the Nahda district of Sana’a left at least 10 people dead. It was the first airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen since the collapse of UN peace talks in early August. Among those killed was Saddam Hussein Abdu al-Burai, a 25-year-old man who was on his first day at work. ...
13 August
Ten students aged under 15 were killed in an attack that hit a school in the Haydan district in the northern Saada governorate, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). On the same day, in Razih district, also in the Saada governorate, an airstrike hit the house of the school principal, Ali Okri, killing his wife, four children and relatives. The UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the bombardment and called for an investigation.
15 August
An attack on a Yemeni hospital run by MSF killed at least 11 people, including a member of charity’s staff. The facility was located in the Abs district of the Hajjah governorate in north-west Yemen. It was the fourth strike against an MSF hospital in Yemen in a year, and prompted MSF to withdraw from six facilities in northern Yemen. Juan Prieto, MSF’s head of mission in Yemen, has rejected any suggestion that its hospitals have been used for military activities.
Source: The Guardian, Edited by Website Team
