File image. Workers cleaning up at a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in the Yemen province of Hajjah on 15 August 2016, a day after the hospital was hit in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike. (Photo credit: AFP).
A Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a family home in Abs district in Yemen’s northwestern province of Hajjah on 21 February killed one person and injured ten.
According to local media reports, seven of the injured victims are children between the ages of 18 months and 14 years.
All the victims are members of the same family.
The owner of the house has been identified as Ahmed Mohammad Tamri. It is not yet clear why the house was targeted but attacks on civilian homes in Yemen are not uncommon as the Saudi-led coalition frequently targets heavily populated residential areas under the pretext of targeting what it calls the Yemeni army’s “secret operations centers.”
The indiscriminate attacks on civilians buildings have killed hundreds of people in recent months. Yemen’s National Salvation Government (NSG) has repeatedly denounced the failure by the international community to denounce the atrocities committed by the Saudi-led coalition against the people of Yemen.
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, described the latest attack on a civilian home as “a war crime and deliberate terrorism.”
The escalation in the brutality by the Saudi-led coalition comes at a time when the coalition is losing significant ground to the Yemeni Armed Forces and allied Popular Committees.
On 20 February, the spokesperson for the Yemeni army, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced that the armed forces had repelled a major attack by Saudi-led coalition troops in Harad district in Hajjah province.
Saree said the army was able to expel coalition forces from the Kasara mountain range on the border with Saudi Arabia. According to local sources, coalition losses since the last escalation in Haradh amounted to more than 580 dead and wounded.
The Saudi-led coalition invaded Yemen in early 2015 in an attempt to remove the Ansarallah resistance movement from power and restore the government of ousted president Abd Mansour Hadi. The nearly seven year-long conflict has killed more than 230,000 people and left millions on the verge of starvation.