SANA, Yemen — Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed at least 23 people and wounded eight others in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Monday, officials and witnesses said
A fire erupted in a market after one strike targeted a nearby gas station in el-Garrahi district. The coalition could not immediately be reached for comment on the reports.
International rights groups have accused the coalition of bombing civilian gatherings, markets, hospitals, and residential areas across Yemen since the beginning of its air campaign against the Iranian backed rebels, known as Houthis, in March 2015.
The war has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine.
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The United States has tripled the number of airstrikes this year against Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, one of the deadliest and most sophisticated terrorist organizations in the world.
US coalition fighters have pushed the militants from their coastal strongholds, and the Pentagon recently boasted of killing key Al Qaeda leaders. Yet the top US counterterrorism official and other American intelligence analysts conceded that the campaign has barely dented the terrorist group’s ability to strike US interests.
“It doesn’t feel yet that we’re ahead of the problem in Yemen,” Nicholas J. Rasmussen, who stepped down this month after three years as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told The New York Times.
The threat of a terrorist attack — with the most commonly feared target a commercial airliner — emanating from the chaotic, ungoverned areas of Yemen remains high on the government’s list of terrorism concerns.
ASSOCIATED PRESS