An airstrike launched by the United States and United Kingdom-backed Saudi coalition killed at least 14 people, including six children on Friday, according to those involved in rescue efforts.
In the Yemeni capital Sanaa, in a residential area on the outskirts, two buildings were reduced to rubble. Local residents and rescuers had to dig through piles of rubble to recover the mangled, bloody bodies of several young children.
“We extracted them one by one from under the rubble. Some of them were children from a single family,” a survivor who lived in one of the attacked buildings told AFP.
Some witnesses have expressed confusion at why the area was targeted, because no military base is known to be in the vicinity.
According to witnesses speaking with Reuters, the warplanes were from the Saudi Arabian coalition, which recieves financial and material backing from several western countries such as the U.S. and U.K. They have waged a war against Yemen for nearly three years in an effort to install the old government that was deposed by the Houthi movement.
Only days ago, a Saudi airstrike killed 60 people after striking a hotel in the northern part of Sanaa. The resulting carnage led to mass protests in the streets of the Yemeni capital against the bloody campaign waged by the Saudis.
On Friday, the United Nations human rights office initiated an independent investigation into the air strikes.
The U.S.-backed coalition is widely criticized for its targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Over 8,000 have been killed by airstrikes in Yemen since 2015. Recently, widespread infrastructure destruction and an ongoing blockade preventing medical supplies from reaching Houthi controlled areas has led to a cholera outbreak that is beleived to have left at least 2,000 dead since April.