Yemen air strike kills 36 in Hajjah province; officials say

At least 36 Yemeni people have been killed in an airstrike by Saudi Arabia on Yemen’s southwestern province of Hajjah.

Issa Ahmed, a resident in Hajjah province, told the Reuters news agency the bottling plant was hit on Sunday morning.

He said: “The process of recovering bodies is finished now.

“The corpses of 36 workers, many of them burnt or in pieces, were pulled out after an airstrike hit the plant this morning.”

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in the Yemen conflict in March and has staged an aerial campaign that has wiped out territorial gains made by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

On Friday, air raids killed 65 people in Taiz – most of them civilians – and last month 65 people including 10 children were killed after a milk factory was hit in western Yemen.

Human rights group Amnesty International said earlier this month that the Saudi-led campaign has left a “bloody trail of civilian death”, which could amount to war crimes.

More than 4,300 people have been killed in five months of conflict in Yemen.

Militias and army units loyal to exiled President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi have made significant gains towards the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa in the last two months.

Members of the exiled government have cited reports that accuse the Houthis of shelling and blockading civilian areas.

Agencies/Canadajournal