Airstrike on Yemen school kills 10 children, wounds dozens

The Saudi-led coalition on Sunday denied targeting a school in Yemen’s rebel-held north in an attack that an worldwide relief agency said killed 10 children.

“When jets target training camps, they can not distinguish between ages”, Assiri said.

This most recent attack comes just days after coalition warplanes bombed a market outside Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, killing at least 18 civilians.

The coalition, which last week released the report of an investigation into claims of civilian deaths in previous strikes, did not immediately comment.

The United Nations Children’s Fund said the facility was a religious school in Juma’a Bin Fadil village in the province’s Haydan district. For more than a year, humanitarian groups have warned that 80 percent of the population desperately needs food and medical assistance.

The children, according to local reports, were taking exams inside their classrooms.

The alleged air strike would add to a growing list of civilian casualties in Yemen blamed on the Saudi-led coalition.

A coalition of Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia, supported and armed by the U.S. and United Kingdom, began bombing Yemen in 2015 in support of the country’s government against a Houthi rebel group aligned with Iran.

Saudi Arabia allegedly threatened to withhold funding for refugees and the Mr Ban grudgingly gave in to their demands.

All the casualties were 8-15 years old, the group, which uses its French acronym, MSF, posted on Twitter.

Human rights groups have accused the Saudi-led coalition of indiscriminately bombing civilians and systematically committing human rights violations, which Riyadh has denied.

Amnesty International called for a thorough and independent probe into the attack.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, 6,500 people have been killed, roughly half of whom are civilians, in the last 500 days, and almost 20 million have no access to clean water.

And the Saudi civil defence said six foreign workers at a water-bottling plant in Najran – three Indians, two Bangladeshis and a Nepali – were wounded when a factory was hit in a rebel bombardment from across the border. Since March 2015, the coalition has battled Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, and allied forces who occupy the capital.

They say Sunday that hundreds of troops are headed to Abyan province to retake the towns of Jaar and Zinjibar, under cover of coalition artillery and naval fire.