Saudi Airstrikes Against Yemeni City of Taiz Kill at Least 65 Civilians

Washington said the strikes seemingly targeted Huthi rebels but also reportedly killed dock workers and damaged infrastructure.

The Saudi-led air raids targeted the Sala area of Taiz, where the Houthi group that dominates northern Yemen has a strong presence. Of those killed, at least 10 were children, they added.

Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen on March 26 – without a UN mandate – in a bid to undermine Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

Dozens of people, mostly civilians, have been killed in fighting and air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s third city Taez, the worldwide Committee of the Red Cross said Saturday.

Dongu’du said patients and Medicins Sans Frontier staff were unable to reach hospitals due to the heavy fighting and airstrikes.

The survivors, the group reported, were left “searching through the rubble with their bare hands” in the hope of finding victims buried underneath.

Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the strikes on Hodeida were directed not at the civilian port but at a base where the Houthis had deployed anti-ship weapons. Many people had sought refuge there in previous days after fleeing form more unsafe parts of the city, he said.

All of them stated the shelling was by Houthi fighters who have been attacking areas managed by pro-government forces.

In a statement, the Joint Forces Command said that the two pilots were killed when their Apache helicopter crashed, while attacking Houthi rebels on the southern boundary of Jazan.

Plagued by chronic instability even before the latest civil war, Yemen is also home to the world’s deadliest branch of al Qaeda and a new offshoot of Islamic State, which surfaced with a series of suicide bombings on Shi’ite mosques on March 20, killing 137 people.

Saudi Arabia sees the Houthis as proxies for Iran, its rival for regional leadership.

Yemeni security officials say an explosion at the governor’s office in the southern port city of Aden has killed four people.