Fighting in Yemen’s south kills 48 civilians

“It is with utmost dismay that I learned of the airstrike on a teachers’ office in Amran, Yemen which killed 13 teachers, 4 children and injured 20 people on Tuesday night”.

The factions in Tihamah will follow the same leadership and be supervised by the president himself, Nasser Da’qeen, a spokesman for the anti-Houthi forces in the western coastal region, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Friday.

Contested Taizz is a gateway to Sana, and many fear an even more bloody confrontation there as forces allied with Hadi continue to push their way northward.

The overnight airstrikes also pounded rebel positions in nearby rebel-held Special Security Camp in eastern Taiz, said the officials and witnesses.

“Those who survived the bombings are searching through the rubble with their bare hands in the hope of finding survivors, as well as the bodies of victims of the attack,” Dongu’du said.

There was no immediate comment from officials from the Saudi-led coalition.

She said Yemen faced the “perfect storm” because those people most in need were not being reached and aid groups working there were not getting enough financial support from donors.

“No nation, no society, can afford to lose its children to conflict – whether from direct attacks, from malnutrition, from disease, from lack of education, or from the traumas of the horrors they witness”, he said.

The air warfare started in March after Hadi fled his final redoubt within the southern port metropolis of Aden within the face of a Houthi advance.

“MSF is trying to provide first aid kits to nurses and doctors so they can treat injured people who are not able to reach the hospital, but we know it is not enough”, he said.

Local residents said that other shells fired by Houthis, from their position in al-Hawban area, east of Taiz, targeted Osifra power plant, which went up in flames.

The attacks underscore the fragility of Yemen’s government despite hundreds of air strikes from Saudi-led Arab states. According to a Los Angeles Times report cited by the Iran daily today, the United States has more than doubled the number of its military staff providing intelligence, munitions, and mid-air refueling for Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes on Yemen.

Saudi-led air strikes dropping cluster munitions in civilian areas of Yemen, which hundreds killed since the beginning of the aggression.

Already in June, the UN envoy for Yemen, Ould Cheik Ahmed, appealed for a ceasefire and warned: “We are one step away from starvation”.

But militants from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the global group’s deadliest branch, have woven themselves among southern fighters battling the Shi’ite Muslim Houthis since the war began in March 26, gaining itself legitimacy and territory.