CAIRO (AP) — Airstrikes hit homes in nearby village from Yemen the capital Sanaa on Saturday, killing at least 27 people and injuring 36 others, most of them women and children, a spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi-run health ministry said.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Anees al-Asbahi said the death toll is expected to rise as search and rescue efforts continue and accused Saudi Arabia to carry out the strikes on al-Shariya. Brig. General Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Houthis, said in a statement on Saturday that the group had carried out attacks against Saudi Arabia in response to the strikes on the village as well as another deadly attack on a market in southwestern Yemen on Friday.
The AP could not independently verify the Houthis’ claims, and Saudi Arabia’s information ministry did not immediately respond to AP requests for comment.
Saturday’s results reflect the rapid escalation of civil war in Yemenwhere a multi-year truce collapsed over the summer. Fighting intensified between The Houthis supported by Iran – who control Sanaa, the north and west of the country – and their Saudi-backed opponents based in the south and east.
An airstrike on a market in southern Yemen on Friday killed at least 30 people, according to Houthi officials. The Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni army blamed each other for the strike.
Images show young children among the injured
Footage from Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV showed hospital staff carrying the limp bodies of several young children from ambulances after Saturday’s strikes. A little girl’s head had been cut open. Other children lay on stretchers, bloody and bandaged as staff tended to them.
Images from the farming village – located in Houthi-ruled territory, about 15 kilometers northeast of Sanaa – showed the rubble of destroyed homes and dust filling the air as people hid in nearby agricultural fields.
Al-Asbahi told Al-Masirah that civilians were still buried under the rubble of houses and that subsequent strikes targeted rescue workers as they tried to pull survivors from the rubble. Footage showed an injured man covered in dust and wearing an orange first aider vest being helped out of an ambulance.
Yemen’s war intensifies, raising fears of hunger and disease
The renewed fighting has raised fears that Yemen could be dragged back into the horrors of a civil war that has lasted more than a decade and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
The war began when the Houthis stormed the north of the country in 2014 and seized the capital, ousting the internationally recognized government. Saudi Arabia built a coalition to support the government, waging a years-long aerial bombing campaign that drew international condemnation for civilian deaths.
The conflict has killed at least 150,000 people, according to the UN, as well as many deaths from hunger and epidemics. The lines of control in the country changed little for years and a truce was agreed in 2022.
The relative calm, however, collapsed over the summer when the Houthis launched new offensives in response, they say, to Saudi Arabia’s continued blockade of their territory. The rebels made a dazzling advance capture much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and strategic islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. At the same time, they intensified their strikes against Saudi Arabia, targeting oil and military infrastructure as well as shipping in the Red Sea.
At the same time, the Saudi-led coalition said it was carrying out airstrikes on Houthi-controlled territory, targeting the rebels’ military infrastructure. The most violent land fighting was concentrated around Taiz, a strategic southern city controlled by the government which the Houthis have now surrounded, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation among civilians. Residents are struggling to get access to drinking water and food as the Houthis restrict movement in the city.
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Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut.
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