Air strike kills 26 at Yemen wedding

Sanaa, October 8

At least 26 people, including seven children, were killed and scores wounded when warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition hit a wedding celebration taking place in a Yemen town, a media report said on Thursday.

The airstrike on Wednesday night hit the house of a tribal leader who allegedly supports the Shiite Houthi group in Sanaban village in Dhamar province, about 100 km from here.

Twenty six people were killed at the wedding ceremony and more than 40 injured, including 15 children and 17 women, Xinhua reported, citing medics and rescuers.

It was the second airstrike on a wedding party in Yemen in over a week. On September 28, coalition warplanes bombed two wedding tents in the province of Taiz, killing at least 131 people - the deadliest attack on civilians in the six-month civil war.

The United Nations has called for peace talks to end the war, saying "there is no military solution to the conflict in Yemen", as more than 4,900 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes, half of them civilians.

The coalition has been bombing the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi group across Yemen on a daily basis since March 26, when Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled to the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

The coalition said its intervention aims to restore Hadi's authority in the country.

The Shiite Houthi group seized half of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, and ousted Hadi and his government.

—IANS