Residents and medics said airstrikes by helicopters flying from Saudi Arabia killed 30 civilians in a Yemeni village on Sunday, but Saudi authorities dismissed the accounts as “totally false”.
Apache helicopters fired rockets at the village of Bani Zela in Hajjah province, 10 km from the Saudi border, killing at least 25 civilians, including women and children, Al Jazeera reported residents as saying.
The helicopters returned for a second strike as residents and medical teams were trying to evacuate casualties, killing three medics and two more civilians, they said.
“People were fleeing their homes as the helicopters pursued,” a resident who identified himself as Khaled said. “They committed a massacre for no reason.”
Yemen’s Saba news agency put the death toll at 28 and said 17 others were injured, some seriously.
“Rescue teams and medics are still working on transferring the casualties to safety,” the agency said, quoting an official in the province.
A Saudi official said the coalition had played no role in any attack in the area.
“This is totally false news. We deny it,” the official, who declined to be identified, added that no coalition helicopters operated so far from the border.
The target of Sunday’s strikes was unclear, but the border area has recently been the scene of clashes between Yemen’s Houthis and Saudi forces. Last week, the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya channel reported that 40 Houthis were killed during an attack on Al-Hathera village in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province.
