Nine civilians killed as Saudi jets bomb regions across Yemen

At least nine people, including two children, have been killed in the latest Saudi military airstrikes against residential neighborhoods in Yemen.

Saudi fighter jets struck a vehicle on Tuesday morning as it was traveling along a road in the Abs district of the northern Yemeni province of Hajjah, leaving five people dead, Arabic-language Yemen al-Yawm television reported.

A clergyman, identified as Sheikh Matroud Saleh al-Soufi, was reportedly among the deceased.

The airstrike came less than a day after a Saudi airstrike hit a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the same Yemeni district, killing at least 25 people.

The medical charity said another 20 people were also injured in the attack.

MSF spokeswoman Malak Shaher said the Geneva-based international humanitarian-aid organization has had a team at the Abs public hospital since 2015.

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement strongly condemned the aerial attack, saying it was carried out in flagrant violation of a ceasefire agreement, which took hold at midnight on April 10.

Also on Tuesday, Saudi jets pounded residential buildings in Bani al-Harith district north of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, leaving two women and two children dead.

Some 17 people were also injured in the Saudi airstrikes against Bani al-Harith.

International concerns are rising over the intensification of the Saudi war on Yemen ever since United Nations (UN)-brokered peace talks in Kuwait between representatives of the former government and the Houthi Ansarullah movement failed to make a breakthrough and were suspended on August 6.

Yemen has been under Saudi military strikes since late March 2015. The war was launched in a bid to undermine the Ansarullah movement and to reinstate Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who has stepped down as Yemen’s president but is now seeking to grab power by force.