On the evening of 12 January, the Saudi-led coalition of aggression carried out airstrikes across Yemen, including one in the vicinity of the so-called public Hospital 48 in the south of the capital, Sanaa.

Though no casualties were reported, the attack caused panic among the patients and staff at the hospital.

On the same day, the Saudi-led coalition carried out an aerial assault on a residential area in the Al-Garrahi district of Hodeidah province, killing two civilians. The coalition also attacked water storage tanks and communication towers in the city of Saada.

Despite condemnation from the United Nations and other international organizations, the Saudi-led coalition has targeted residential areas and civilian facilities hundreds of times in the past few years.

British non-governmental organization, Oxfam, has recorded more than 200 attacks on hospitals and water facilities by the coalition.

According to Article 8 of the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the attacks on civilians or civilian facilities are a war crime.

The article states that any act that involves, “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking a direct part in the hostilities,” amounts to a war crime.

The Saudi-led coalition claims that it attacks civilian facilities because the Yemeni Armed Forces are using the facilities to launch attacks against the coalition.

The Yemeni army has, however, denied the accusations and said they are just an attempt by the coalition to justify its crimes.

With the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia and its allies invaded Yemen in early 2015 with the aim of overthrowing the government of the country and replacing it with that of the former Saudi-backed president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Despite nearly seven years of brutal aerial and ground assaults, the coalition has failed to defeat the Yemeni Armed Forces and the allied Popular Committees, who in recent months have managed to push the invaders out of a number of provinces and districts that were previously under the control of the coalition.