Dozens of victims in reported Saudi-led coalition bombing of Yemen hospital

An airstrike launched by the Saudi-led coalition has reportedly killed at least 26 people and injured dozens of civilians in the vicinity of a general hospital in Hodeidah, Yemen.

Footage from the scene of the alleged bombing shown by Yemen’s Almasirah television station, which is linked to the Houthi rebels, showed what appeared to be bodies of multiple people covered by blankets.

The bombing destroyed an ambulance as it was entering the gates of the hospital, local freelance journalist Ahmad Algohbary reported.

Algohbary said the hospital was targeted when people injured in an earlier attack on a fishing market were being brought there. Reuters sites local medical sources as saying that 26 people were killed and 35 others injured on Thursday in coalition attacks on Hudaydah port and the fishing market.

The Saudi-led coalition has denied the allegations that it was behind the deadly raid on the hospital, laying the blame on Houthi rebels. Coalition spokesman Colonel Turki Al-Maliki told Al Arabiya TV the coalition warplanes did not carry out any sorties in the area.

Houthi rebels, meanwhile, said that the civilians perished in a so-called “double tap strike” attack perpetrated by the Saudi coalition.  Youssef al-Hadri, a spokesman for the Houthi-affiliated Health Ministry, called the alleged bombing a “war crime” speaking to the German press agency DPA. According to the ministry’s count, 52 people have been killed in the strikes and a further 101 people have been injured.

Hodeidah, a port city held by the Houthi rebels, is besieged by the Riyadh-led coalition trying to put ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi back in power in Yemen. The intervention has lasted for over three years and caused what the UN calls world’s largest humanitarian disaster witnessed today.

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