Saudi airstrike kills 3 Yemeni children, critically injures parents

At least three children from a single family have been killed after Saudi fighter jets bombed a residential building in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan.

The air raid hit the building in the village of al-Shamil, located in Abyan’s district of Wuday’, early on Tuesday, Yemen’s al-Masirah television reported.

The children’s parents are said to have been critically injured in the assault.

A day earlier, Saudi warplanes repeatedly pounded the Kahlan military base in the province of Sa’ada. The Harad district in the northwestern province of Hajjah also came under similar attacks.

Meanwhile, Yemeni forces responded to the Saudi attacks, targeting the Ma’azab military base in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region of Jizan with rockets and destroying several military vehicles there.

Yemeni troops, backed by Ansarullah fighters, also fired Katyusha rockets at a military convoy in the Saudi military base of Sababa in the same region.

A Yemeni boy walks amid the ruins of a school destroyed in a Saudi strike in the capital Sana’ a, on February 12. ©AFP

Riyadh’s new airstrikes come in defiance of a UN-backed ceasefire between the Yemeni warring sides, which took effect in April.

The impoverished Arabian Peninsula country has seen relentless military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015, with internal sources putting the death toll from the aggression at about 10,000.

Since April 21, Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has been in talks with the Saudi-backed representatives of the former government, but the negotiations have failed to make progress amid fundamental disputes on the agenda.

Saudi Arabia backs Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and seeks to undermine Ansarullah through airstrikes and ground operations against neighboring Yemen.