Saudi-led airstrike at Yemen wedding killed at least 20

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — An airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition hit a wedding party in northern Yemen, killing at least 20 people including the bride, health officials said Monday, as harrowing images emerged on social media of the deadly bombing, the third to hit Yemeni civilians since the weekend. Khaled al-Nadhri, the top health official in the northern province of Hajja, told The Associated Press on Monday that most of the dead were women and children who were gathered in one of the tents set up for the wedding party in the district of Bani Qayis. He said the bride was also among the dead. The coalition has been waging a war on Yemen’s Shia rebels known as Houthis, who control much of the north, and the capital, Sana’a, to restore the internationally recognised government to power. The Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV network on Monday reported Houthi political leader Saleh al-Sammad died Thursday during Saudi-led airstrikes on Hodeidah province. After the wedding strike, which took place late Sunday, the groom and 45 of the wounded were brought to the al-Jomhouri hospital, said the facility's manager, Mohammed al-Sawmali. Health authorities appealed for people to donate blood. Ali Nasser al-Azib, the deputy head of al-Jomhouri hospital, said 30 children were among the wounded, some in critical condition with shrapnel wounds and severed limbs. Health ministry spokesman Abdel-Hakim al-Kahlan said ambulances were initially unable to reach the site of the bombing for fear of subsequent airstrikes as the jets continued to fly overhead after the initial strike. Another airstrike on Sunday night hit a house elsewhere in Hajja, killing an entire family of five, according to al-Nadhri. On Saturday, at least 20 civilians were killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition after fighter jets bombed a bus carrying commuters near the war-torn district of Mowza in western Yemen, near the city of Taiz, which has been locked in fighting for three years. The coalition says it does not target civilians and has set up an investigation committee into alleged mass casualty air strikes which have mostly cleared the coalition of any blame. According to the independent monitor Yemen Data Project, a third of the 16,847 airstrikes since the war started have hit non-military targets. Over the past three years, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed and tens of thousands wounded, while more than 3 million people have been displaced because of the fighting. U.N. officials and rights groups have accused the coalition of committing war crimes and of being responsible for most of the killings. The head of Al Jumhouri hospital in Hajjah said that by telephone that the hospital had received 40 bodies, most of them torn to pieces, and that 46 people had been injured, including 30 children, in air strikes that hit a wedding gathering. The Saudi-led coalition blames the Houthis, saying they are using civilians as human shields and hiding among the civilian population. The United States and European countries have also been criticized and accused of complicity in the coalition's attacks in Yemen because of their support for the alliance. The US and European countries have also been criticised and accused of complicity in the coalition’s attacks in Yemen because of their support for the alliance and for supplying it with weapons worth billions of dollars. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has faced a flurry of attacks by the Houthis, with the kingdom's defense forces saying they have intercepted missiles targeting the capital, Riyadh, and other cities, including two on Monday.
A Saudi-led coalition airstrike kills Yemen's Supreme Political Council president Saleh Ali al-Sammad. He was considered the most senior Houthi official in Sana'a.