MOSCOW (Sputnik) – At least 23 people attending a wedding party in Yemen were killed by an airstrike carried out by the Saudi-led military coalition, The New York Times reports citing witnesses and local medical workers.
The airstrike, the second one to hit a wedding in Yemen in just over a week, occurred in Dhamar province, about 50 miles south of the country’s capital Sanaa, according to the newspaper.
At least one of the three sons who were to be married in a joint ceremony on Wednesday was killed in the airstrike, The New York Times said citing a relative present at the wedding.
Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government and Shiite Houthi rebels, the country’s main opposition force that made the country’s government resign in January.
A coalition of Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, has been launching airstrikes in Yemen at the request of president Hadi since March, in an attempt to push Houthis out of areas they have come to control.
On September 28 coalition planes bombed wedding tents in the southwestern Yemeni village of Wahijah, near the port of Mocha (Mokha) on the Red Sea coast, killing dozens of people, including eight children.
According to the United Nations, hundreds of civilians have been killed in Yemen in the course of the conflict and around 80 percent of the country’s population are currently in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.