Saudi-led forces’ airstrike in Yemen kills at least 21

SANAA, Yemen — Asaudi-led coalition airstrike at a fruit-and-vegetable market near Yemen’s flashpoint Red Sea port of Hodeida killed at least 21 civilians, including children, the U.N. humanitarian aid agency said Thursday.

Wednesday’s attack came amid mounting fears of a fresh coalition assault on Hodeida — a city that has been the lifeline for international aid deliveries to Yemen, ravaged by a brutal 3½-year war between the Saudi-led alliance and Shite rebels known as Houthis.

The coalition has been trying to wrest Hodeida from the Iranbacked rebels but the campaign, like the rest of Yemen’s war, had fallen into a stalemate.

The airstrike, which hit in the town of Bayt el-faqih, just south of Hodeida, also wounded 10 people.

The director of the Bayt el-faqih hospital, Abdullah Shahawi, said all the victims were civilians and that at least two were children.

Also on Wednesday, three more people were killed and six injured when strikes hit three vehicles on July 7 road in Al Hali District in Hodeida province, the U.N.’S Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

It’s not uncommon for coalition jets to hit wedding parties, funerals, residential homes and hospitals. In August, an airstrike hit a bus carrying children in northern Yemen, killing more than 40.

The casualties have prompted rights groups to call for the suspension of multibillion-dollar U.S. and European arms sales to Saudi Arabia, for decades among the world’s largest buyers of weapons.