Over dozen Yemeni civilians killed in new Saudi raids

More than a dozen people have lost their lives in fresh Saudi airstrikes against civilian targets across Yemen as Riyadh presses ahead with its devastating aerial campaign against its crisis-stricken southern neighbor.

Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Masirah television network that Saudi military aircraft on Tuesday evening struck an area in the At Tuhayat district of Yemen’s western coastal province of Hudaydah, killing four people.

A woman and her two sons also lost their lives when Saudi jets targeted their house in the Nihm district of the mountainous northwestern province of Sa’ada. Two people sustained injuries in the aerial assault as well.

Earlier in the day, Saudi warplanes bombarded residential neighborhoods in the Sahar district of the same Yemeni province, leaving ten civilians killed and injured.

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.

At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

Meanwhile, a high-ranking UN aid official has warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

“After three years of conflict, conditions in Yemen are catastrophic,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

He added, “People’s lives have continued unraveling. Conflict has escalated since November driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes.”

Ging further noted that cholera has infected 1.1 million people in Yemen since last April, and a new outbreak of diphtheria has occurred in the war-ravaged Arab country since 1982.