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Yemen toll in wedding airstrike rises to 131
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The death toll from an airstrike on a wedding party in Yemen has jumped to 131, medics said yesterday, in one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in Yemen’s war that drew strong condemnation from the United Nations secretary-general.
A Saudi-led Arab coalition that has air supremacy over Yemen has strongly denied any role in the wedding party carnage, and a coalition spokesman suggested that local militias may have fired the projectiles.
The United States-backed coalition has been targeting the Iranian-allied Houthis mostly by air across Yemen since March with the goal of ousting the war’s dominant armed faction from regions it has seized since last year, including the capital Sanaa in the north, and to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Residents said on Monday two missiles tore through tents in the Red Sea village of al-Wahgah, near the ancient port of al-Mokha, where a local man affiliated with the Houthi group was holding his wedding reception.
The area is deemed the gateway to the Bab al-Mandab strait connecting the Red Sea with the Arabian Sea, a vital route for oil tanker and other maritime traffic between Asia and Europe.
A resident of Al-Wahgah had said on Monday that 12 women, eight children and seven men had died in the air strike, and a local official put the death toll at 30.
Yesterday, a source at Maqbana hospital, where most of the casualties were taken, said the death toll had risen to 131 people, including many women and children.
UB Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the high toll at the wedding event and warned that any intentional attack on civilians violates international law and must be investigated.
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