At least seven civilians have been killed when Saudi military aircraft carried out airstrikes in Yemen’s Southern province of Dhale as the Riyadh regime presses ahead with its atrocious bombardment campaign against its southern neighbor. RNA - Saudi fighter jets conducted aerial assaults against two civilian cars as they were traveling along a road in the al-Awd district of the province on Saturday afternoon, an unnamed local source told Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network.
The source added that there were women and children among the fatalities.
Earlier in the day, Saudi warplanes launched airstrikes against residential buildings in the Southwestern Yemeni city of Dhamar. There were no immediate reports about possible casualties or the extent of damage caused.
The United Nations has warned that the situation in war-ravaged Yemen is further deteriorating as the Arab country is facing the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.
“The humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the worst in the world,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding thousands.
Official UN figures say that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March 2015. But the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) believes that at least 56,000 people have lost their lives in the war. The violence has also left around two-thirds of Yemen’s population of 27 million relying on aid amid an ongoing strict naval and aerial blockade. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
Save the Children, a charity, has reported that more than 84,700 children under the age of five may have starved to death in Yemen since the Saudi regime and a coalition of its allies launched the brutal war on the already-impoverished nation.
According to Fars News Agancy, Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fuelled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods.
A number of Western countries, the US, the UK, and France in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
An Oxfam representative stated that the US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war".
“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, told RT, adding that "British, French, American governments are all behind this, they are all supporting this war".
A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.
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