Saudi coalition strike on school bus kills dozens of children

Dozens of people, most of them children, have died in an air strike in rebel-held northern Yemen on Thursday after a missile hit a school bus at a busy local market.   

The missile was fired by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite Houthi rebels in the area, in retaliation for a strike in Saudi Arabia yesterday, which killed one person.   

A majority of the 43 people killed and more than 60 injured are reportedly ‘children under the age of ten’.  

Yemen’s rebel-run Al Masirah TV aired dramatic images of wounded children, their clothes and UNICEF provided schoolbags covered with blood, as they lay on hospital stretchers.   

The attack took place in the Dahyan market in Saada province, a Houthi rebel stronghold which lies along the border with Saudi Arabia.   

The bus hit by the missile was ferrying local civilians, a majority of them children, according to Yemeni tribal leaders.  

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Twitter that an ICRC supported hospital received dozens of dead and wounded following the attack that hit the bus with children.  

‘Scores killed, even more injured, most under the age of ten,’ the head of the ICRC in Yemen, Johannes Bruwer, said on his Twitter account.   

Col. Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the attack was a response to a missile fired at the kingdom’s south, killing one person and wounding 11 others.
Sana’a (Daily Mail) 9 August