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At least 55 killed as Saudi-led warplanes hit Yemen's Taiz: Saba
A Saudi soldier stands guard as servicemen on a Saudi military cargo plane prepare to unload aid at the international airport of Yemen's southern port city of Aden, July 24, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
25/07/2015
SANAA (Reuters) - The death toll from Saturday's Saudi-led airstrike on the central Yemeni city of Taiz rose to 80 people with at least 150 people injured, local medical sources said.
The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency earlier on Saturday reported the strike on Taiz had killed 55 people but said the casualty figure was expected to rise.
A coalition of Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, has been bombarding Iran-allied Houthi forces in Yemen since late March in a bid to reinstate President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh.
The Saba agency had quoted a local source in Taiz as saying that the bombing early on Saturday morning had targeted the Mokha area inhabited mostly by engineers and workers of a power station and some displaced families.
The frontlines of Yemen's war shifted to the favor of the Gulf Arab coalition earlier this month when in coordination with forces loyal to Hadi they managed to drive the Houthis out of the southern port city of Aden and much of the surrounding areas.
Since then warplanes have been landing in Aden airport carrying equipment necessary to help re-open the facility which had been shut down by the fighting.
Aden and the other southern provinces have been largely inaccessible to U.N. food aid, and about 13 million people - more than half the population - are thought to be in dire need of food.
In the Red Sea port city of Hodaida, Saba said a bomb that was planted in an oil tanker on its way to some oil facilities was diffused and an investigation of the incident was ongoing.
(Reporting By Mohammed Ghobari; Writing By Maha El Dahan; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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