Saudi Airstrike Kills Nine Civilians, Mostly Children, in Northern Yemen

Pre-Dawn Attack Leveled Home While Family Slept

Jason Ditz 

Posted onAugust 4, 2017CategoriesNewsTagsSaudi Arabia, Yemen

A pre-dawn Saudi airstrike against the predominantly Shi’ite city of Saada, in northern Yemen, has destroyed a home and killed nine civilians, six of them children. Saudi officials have yet to comment on why the house was attacked.

This has been a problem throughout the Saudi war in Yemen, however, with airstrikes killing a massive number of civilians, particularly in Shi’ite parts of the country, and despite repeated promises to improve their targeting, it keeps happening.

A relative of the victims says that everyone was still asleep when the attack happened, leveling the home and killing all within, three women and six children from an extended family. Local officials say three other civilians were wounded nearby.

Residents in the area took quite some time to even start picking through the ruins of the house to recover the bodies, noting that the Saudi warplanes which attacked continued to circle overhead long after, raising fears they’d attack anyone trying to rescue survivors, which has also been common practice in the Saudi air war.

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/08/04/saudi-airstrike-kills-nine-civilians-mostly-children-in-northern-yemen/