CAIRO (AP) — Air strikes on homes in a village near Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, killed at least 25 people and injured 30 others, mostly women and children, on Saturday, a health ministry spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi rebels said.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Anes Al-Arasbashi accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out the attack on al-Shariya. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claims, and the Saudi Press Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The figure reflects the rapid deterioration of Yemen’s civil war, which saw a year-long truce collapse this summer. Fighting has escalated between the Iran-backed Houthis, who control Sanaa in the north and west of the country, and their Saudi-backed rivals in the south and east.
An airstrike on a market in southern Yemen killed at least 30 people on Friday, according to Houthi officials. Both the Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-backed forces blamed each other for the attack.
Footage from Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV of Saturday’s attack showed workers at a local hospital carrying the limp bodies of several young children from ambulances. A little girl’s head was split open. Other children lay on stretchers, covered in blood and bandaged, as staff tended to them.
Footage from the village, located in Houthi-ruled territory about 15 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Sanaa, showed rubble of destroyed homes and dust in the air as people took shelter in nearby farmland.
Alasbashi told Al-Masirah that at least 25 people had died, compared with the 22 he had earlier given to The Associated Press. He told the channel that civilians were still buried under the rubble of homes hit by the strike, which later targeted emergency workers trying to pull survivors from the rubble. The video shows an injured man covered in dust and wearing an orange first responder vest being helped out of an ambulance.
The renewed fighting has stoked fears that Yemen is slipping back into the horrors of a civil war that has raged for more than a decade and caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
The war began in 2014 when the Houthis stormed out of the north and seized the capital, ousting the internationally recognized government. Saudi Arabia formed a coalition supporting the government and launched a years-long air campaign that killed civilians and was condemned by the international community.
According to the United Nations, the war has killed at least 150,000 people, with starvation and disease outbreaks taking a heavy toll. The country’s Line of Control has remained virtually unchanged for years, with a truce agreed in 2022.
However, they say that relative calm was shattered this summer when the Houthis launched a new offensive in response to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing blockade of their territory. In a lightning-fast advance, the rebels captured much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and strategic islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. At the same time, they have stepped up attacks on Saudi Arabia, targeting oil and military infrastructure as well as shipping in the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition said it has been conducting airstrikes in territory controlled by the Houthis, targeting rebel military infrastructure. The fiercest ground fighting is centered around Taiz, the strategic government-controlled southern city that the Houthis have now surrounded, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation for civilians. Residents are struggling to secure drinking water and food supplies as the Houthis restrict access to the city.