Three civilians were killed and nine wounded when a mortar shell hit a crowded market in southwestern Yemen, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said.
The shell struck a market in Taiz, a city just inland from the Red Sea port of Mocha and under siege by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, MSF said on Wednesday, July 18.
“Shelling in #Taiz city remains deadly. Three people reported dead after a mortar hit a building in a crowded market. Nine wounded were treated by doctors in @MSF-supported Al Thawra Hospital,” MSF tweeted.
.@MSF: Shelling in #Taiz city remains deadly. Three people reported dead after a mortar hit a building in a crowded market. Nine wounded were treated by doctors in @MSF-supported Al Thawra Hospital #Yemen #Taiz
— MSF Yemen (@msf_yemen) July 18, 2018
MSF did not say when the raid took place or give details on who was responsible. Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported shelling by the Houthis in Taiz on Tuesday, breaking a period of relative calm in the city.
The Houthi rebels are locked in a war against the government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is backed by a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Nearly 10,000 people have been killed in the Yemen conflict since 2015, when Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the government’s fight against the Houthis. More than 2,200 of them were children.
The U.N. has said the majority of casualties were caused by airstrikes.
In an interview published by the BBC on Tuesday, Hadi said the intervention had gone on longer than he expected, but the alternatives would have been worse.
“I don’t regret it at all,” he said. “Without the support of the coalition these [recaptured] areas would have been under control of the Houthis. We believe the coalition operation, Decisive Storm, is the most successful one that has ever been undertaken by the Arab World.”
“If Decisive Storm had not happened it would have been the beginning of a civil war, lasting longer than the conflict in Somalia.”
The conflict has pushed the impoverished country to the brink of famine, triggering what the United Nations says is the world’s worst single humanitarian crisis.
With reporting from AFP
