Houthis: “At least 25 killed in Yemen in Saudi airstrikes” ... civilian tragedy for a second straight day

[Financial News] Yemen’s pro-Iranian Houthi rebels claimed that Saudi airstrikes on a village near the capital, Sanaa, killed at least 25 people, including women and children. Another large-scale civilian tragedy occurred just one day after the sides traded blame over 30 casualties in a market in the south the previous day.
According to AP and other foreign media on the 7th (local time), a spokesperson for the Houthi Health Ministry said Saudi airstrikes hit Al-Shariyah, a village about 15 km northeast of Sanaa, collapsing several homes. The death toll was initially reported as 22 but was later raised to at least 25, while the number of injured was also reported to have reached 30.
Houthi-affiliated media reported that civilians were trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed homes and that most of the casualties were women and children. They also condemned the attacks, saying that paramedics rescuing survivors were themselves targeted in two follow-up airstrikes. Saudi Arabia has yet to officially comment on whether it carried out the airstrikes.
The bloody clashes between the two sides have been escalating day by day. On the 6th, the previous day, a market in the Al-Waziya area of southern Yemen’s Ta’izz Governorate was attacked, killing 30 people. The Houthis claimed it was bombed by fighter jets that took off from Saudi Arabia’s Khamis Mushait base, while Saudi Arabia and Yemeni government forces blamed the Houthis, saying they had fired a ballistic missile at the market.
Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition said in a statement that day that it had intercepted and destroyed a Houthi missile fired toward Riyadh, the Saudi capital, as military tensions between the two sides reached a peak.
Yemen’s civil war, triggered when the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014, remained relatively quiet for some time after the 2022 ceasefire. But fighting resumed last July amid disputes over the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade, and civilian casualties have spiraled out of control as Houthi offensives and Saudi strikes on strongholds have continued.


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