An airstrike by the US-backed Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen killed 12 civilians, including seven children, in the coastal city of Hodeidah on Monday, medics and a witness said.
Medics and a witness who saw the wreckage said the airstrike had destroyed a house in al-Hali district, where displaced civilians from other provinces were settled, Reuters reported.
The 12 victims were all from the same family, they said.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition told Reuters, “We take this report very seriously and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are—using an internationally approved, independent process. Whilst this is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
Hodeidah is home to the impoverished country’s biggest port from where most of the humanitarian aid reaches millions of civilians on the brink of famine. The operation of port, controlled by Houthis, was not affected by the airstrike.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened in a civil war in Yemen in 2015 against the Houthis to restore the Riyadh-aligned, fugitive government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
The alliance, which includes other Muslim states, has conducted thousands of airstrikes targeting Houthi fighters and has often hit civilian areas.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured since March 2015.
The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.
A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.
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