50 killed, injured in fresh Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen

Sanaa, Nov 8 (IANS) At least 50 people, including civilians, were killed and injured in fresh Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on a village in Yemen's northwest province of Hajjah on Tuesday, a provincial security official and medics said.

The airstrikes targeted Harran village, which is located about 30 km south of battlefronts of Medi desert and Haradh border crossing near the southern Saudi borders, Xinhua reported.

Medics said coalition war planes continued flying over the area and hindered the rescue operations.

Many of the victims were women and children, the official told Xinhua by phone on condition of anonymity.

The exact number of the deaths is still not immediately clear.

This is the latest in a series of airstrikes by the coalition since the war began more than two and a half years.

Last week, the coalition airstrikes hit a hotel and popular marketplace in the nearby province of Saada, killing 29 civilians and injuring other two dozens, although the coalition said the hotel and marketplace were military targets because there were gatherings of Houthi fighters there.

Saudi led a military coalition of 10 countries and intervened in Yemen's civil war in March 2015 to back the internationally recognized government of exiled President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi against Iranian-allied Shiite Houthis, who stormed the capital Sanaa and controlled much of the country's north.

The coalition has yet defeated the Yemeni rebels despite thousands of Saudi-led airstrikes against Houthis.

The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, and displaced more than 3 million others, according to UN agencies.

The war has led Yemen to the world's most humanitarian catastrophe with less than one million Yemenis hit by a deadly cholera outbreak and pushed the poor Arab country into the brink of mass famine.