CAIRO — Airstrikes near Sanaa hit homes in the village of al-Shariya on Saturday, killing at least 27 people and wounding 36 others, most of them women and children, a spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi-run Health Ministry said.
The spokesman, Anees al-Asbahi, told The Associated Press he expected the toll to rise while search and rescue work continued, and he accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out the strikes. The AP said it could not independently verify the allegation, and Saudi Arabia’s Information Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Al-Asbahi said civilians were still buried under the rubble of houses hit in the strikes. He said later strikes targeted emergency workers who were trying to pull survivors out of the wreckage.
Footage broadcast by Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV showed hospital workers carrying the limp bodies of young children out of ambulances. Other children lay on stretchers, bloodied and bandaged, while staff treated them.
Images from the farming village, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Sanaa in Houthi-held territory, showed destroyed houses reduced to rubble and dust hanging in the air as people sheltered in nearby fields.
The toll rose through the day. Al-Asbahi first reported 22 dead, then at least 25, before the later update put the count at 27 killed and 36 wounded.
Houthis Claim Attacks in Response
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, claimed in a statement later Saturday that the group had carried out attacks against Saudi Arabia in response. He linked the claimed attacks to the village strikes and to a deadly attack on Friday on a market in southwestern Yemen.
Houthi officials said at least 30 people were killed on Friday in the strike on the market in Taiz province. The Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-backed military each blamed the other side for that attack, and neither side’s claim was independently verified.
A War That Resumed
Saturday’s reported casualties came as Yemen’s civil war grows more intense after a yearslong truce fell apart over the summer. The Iran-backed Houthis control Sanaa and much of northern and western Yemen. Saudi-backed forces are based mainly in the south and east.
The war dates to 2014. That year the Houthis took Sanaa and drove out the internationally recognized government. A Saudi-led coalition formed to back the ousted government. The air campaign that followed killed many civilians and drew condemnation around the world.
United Nations figures put the death toll at 150,000 or more. Hunger and disease account for many deaths beyond that count. For years the front lines hardly shifted. Then, in 2022, the sides agreed to a truce.
That calm broke down over the summer. The Houthis said they began new offensives in response to a continued Saudi blockade of their territory, seized stretches of the Red Sea coastline and strategic islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and stepped up attacks on Saudi oil and military sites and on shipping in the Red Sea. Saudi officials reported 12 dead and 309 injured in an October attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport.
The Saudi-led coalition says its strikes in Houthi-held territory target the rebels’ military infrastructure. The heaviest ground fighting has centered on Taiz, a government-held city in the south that the Houthis have encircled, where residents struggle to obtain drinking water and food.
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