Women Killed in Saudi Airstrike on Wedding in Yemen

A Saudi airstrike has killed a dozen women in the northern Yemeni province of Ma’rib, the country’s al-Masirah TV said Sunday.

The airstrike targeted a wedding procession in the Qaramesh region on Saturday, it said, according to Itar Tass.

Locals said the women were simply returning on foot from the wedding when they were targeted. Several other women, who were riding in a car, escaped the attacks, they said.

 “The aggressor committed a hideous crime by targeting ordinary women who were returning from a wedding,” said the father of two of the slain women, using a term widely used by the Yemenis to refer to Saudi Arabia.  

 The deaths are the latest from more than two years of Saudi Arabia’s devastating military campaign against Yemen. Well above 12,000, including many women and children, have been killed in Saudi airstrikes while millions remain displaced in a dire humanitarian situation.

The military intervention was launched in March 2015 as part of a Saudi plan to reinstate a former president and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

Rights groups and governments have repeatedly lambasted Saudi Arabia for its indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Yemen, saying many of those killed in the airstrikes are ordinary people with no links to groups opposed to Riyadh.

They have documented numerous cases where Saudi warplanes have deliberately dropped bombs on public gatherings, including on weddings. Riyadh simply ignores any criticism after such attacks and calls them a mistake.

H.M