Local Editor

The United Nations [UN] said that at least 142 civilians have been killed in Yemen over the past 10 days, sending the total civilian death toll in more than three months of violence above 1,600, when a Saudi-led aggression began against the country.

Saudi-led airstrikes have continued despite a UN-declared ceasefire in Yemen. 

A spokesman for the UN human rights office, Rupert Colville, said that the latest numbers bring the total killed since March 26 to 1,670, while 3,829 civilians have been injured.

He said in Switzerland’s Geneva that at least 142 civilians were killed between July 3 and Monday, and another 224 were injured. That included a total of 76 deaths and 38 injuries in a pair of Saudi-led airstrikes on markets July 6.

On one particularly deadly day, 6 July, two markets in different provinces were hit by airstrikes. Forty civilians, including 12 children and seven women, were killed in the first Saudi-led airstrike, while 17 other civilians were injured. The second one killed 36 civilians, including eight women and nine children, while injuring another 21.

During the bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva, Johannes van der Klaauw, the representative in Yemen of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], recalled that Yemen is impacted by one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, four out of five Yemenis being in need of some kind of assistance, which amounts to 21 out of 25 million people.