The Houthi insurgency in Yemen has stated that an airstrike by the Saudi military has caused the deaths of at least 30 people and left another eight injured this Friday in a small market in the Taiz governorate, one of the areas most heavily affected by the new escalation of the conflict that has been plaguing the country for more than ten years.
The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Anees al Asbahi, has put the number of deaths at 30 and the number of injured at eight in an initial count, while emergency teams continue search and rescue operations among the wreckage of the destroyed market.
In a message circulated on his social networks, he warned that the number of victims could rise, given that the airstrike hit an area heavily frequented by civilians.
In this way, he conveyed his “energetic condemnation” for what he described as a “heinous crime” carried out by the Saudi aviation against the Al Hadara market, in the Yemeni province of Taiz. For this reason, Asbahi denounced “a flagrant attack and a complete war crime that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
The military spokesperson for the insurgents, General Yahya Sari, has indicated that the aircraft involved was an F-15 that took off from the Saudi base in Jamis Mushait and was bombing the area for nearly an hour before returning to that base at around 08.00 in the morning.
The international coalition led by Saudi Arabia—an ally of the Yemeni Government, which withdrew to the city of Adén after the Houthis took control of the capital, Sana’a, at the end of 2014—has not, for now, offered any public reaction to this attack.