Local Editor
Air strikes have killed at least 22 civilians, including women and children, in a village in northern Yemen over the past 48 hours, the United Nations said on Monday.
The UN, however, did not say who was responsible. But the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting on the side of the resigned Yemeni regime is behind the bombardment and all the airstrikes since it launched its military campaign in 2015.
Medical sources quoted by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen said the attacks in Kushar district, in Hajja Province, killed 10 women and 12 children and wounded 30 people, including 14 under the age of 18.
"Many of the injured children have been sent to hospitals in Abs district and in Sanaa for treatment and several require possible evacuation to survive," the UN Coordinator in the country, Lise Grande, said in a statement.
The Arabic-language Al-Masirah television said the air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition had killed 23 civilians.
Houthi official Deifallah al-Shami accused the coalition of "deliberately committing... this massacre," in a statement carried by Yemen’s official Saba news agency.
Some areas of Hajjah province are controlled by forces loyal to the resigned regime, while others, such as Kushar district, are in the hands of the Houthis.
Fighting has taken place in the Kushar district for weeks as fighters from the Hajour tribe battled with the advancing Houthis.
The Houthis claim that elements of the Hajour tribe have been stockpiling weapons provided by Saudi Arabia and bringing fighters into the area, a breach of a six-year-old truce that had seen the Hajour remain neutral throughout the current conflict, Al Jazeera reported.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than two million and driven the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country to the verge of famine.
The Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 to forcefully restore the resigned regime of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.
It has conducted thousands of air strikes and has often hit civilians, but it denies doing so intentionally.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
