At least 14 people were killed in Sanaa overnight from Monday to Tuesday in raids by the Saudi-led military coalition, in response to a deadly attack on the United Arab Emirates claimed by Yemeni rebels.
After the unprecedented drone attack that targeted an industrial zone in Abu Dhabi on Monday, the Saudi-led coalition, which includes the Emirates, has been stepping up retaliatory raids on the capital of Yemen since Monday evening, controlled by the Houthi rebels.
“The number of victims of the bombardments has risen to 14 dead and 11 injured,” a medical source told AFP in Sanaa, where residents were clearing the rubble on Tuesday in the hope of finding survivors, after two buildings were destroyed. been blown away by the raids.
A witness told AFP that he saw 11 bodies as he searched for relatives and a bulldozer cleared the area. “We are still looking for wounded and martyrs in the rubble,” said this witness, Akram al-Ahdal.
The rebels for their part announced the death of General Abdallah Qassem Al-Jounaid, director of the Faculty of Aviation and Air Defense. He was killed “with members of his family”, according to their press agency Saba, which denounces “a heinous crime committed by the aviation of the aggressor [la coalition], who targeted his home on Monday evening.
The coalition, which has been intervening in Yemen since 2015 in support of the government against the rebels who seized the capital, Sanaa, in particular in 2014, had promised on Monday to “respond” to the “terrorist” attack by the Houthis against the Emirates.
It thus launched new strikes on Tuesday on the capital Sanaa, saying it was targeting “camps and Houthis headquarters”, according to the Saudi public television channel Al-Ekhbariya.
After “condemning” the Houthi rebel attack on the Emirates the day before, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “deplores the recent airstrikes in Sanaa […] which caused numerous civilian victims”, declared its spokesman on Tuesday, adding that he “recalls [à toutes les parties] their duties […] to protect civilians”.
Monday’s rebel attack opened a new front in Yemen’s war and further dampened hopes for a settlement.
The conflict has left 377,000 dead, according to the UN, direct and indirect victims of a war that has lasted for more than seven years and has displaced millions of people in what was already the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula. .