10 dead as Saudi warplanes bomb civilian targets in Yemen

Saudi warplanes have bombed residential areas in the Sa’ada and Hajjah provinces of Yemen, killing at least 10 civilians, including an entire family.

News ID: 433286

Date: 20 October 2017 - 22:39

RNA - The Saudi air raids, which targeted the city of Ghamr in Sa’ada on Friday, left six civilians dead, while four others, all members of the same family, lost their lives in similar attacks in the Abs city of Hajjah.

Both provinces are located in northwestern Yemen and have shared borders with Saudi Arabia.

In another incident, a civilian was killed due to Saudi shelling in the city of Mawza in Ta’izz Province, the al-Masirah television network reported.

In retaliation, Yemeni snipers shot dead three Saudi soldiers in the kingdom’s Asir region. They also fired a Zelzal-1 (earthquake-1) missile toward Saudi forces at the border with Saudi Arabia were they had congregated.

In early May, al-Masirah reported that Yemeni sharpshooters had managed to fatally injure as many as 64 Saudi troops in April alone.

A report by Reuters published in April last year said that at least 400 Saudi soldiers had been killed in cross-border fire since the start of the Saudi war against Yemen in March 2015.

The Riyadh regime has maintained a policy of ambiguity regarding its casualties in the war on Yemen. Senior military officials have said that they would not release such information until after the war.

Over the past two and a half years, Yemen has been under heavy airstrikes by Saudi Arabia’s warplanes as part of a brutal war against the Arabian Peninsula country in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign, and much of the country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been ravaged.

Ansarullah fighters, backed by the Yemeni army and popular forces, have been defending the country against the US-backed Saudi aggression.

The Saudi war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

The UN says the Saudi war has left some 17 million Yemenis hungry, nearly seven million facing famine, and about 16 million almost without access to water or sanitation.

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