Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Pro-government forces recently launched a major offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen

At least 20 people in the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hudaydah have been killed in air strikes blamed on the Saudi-led coalition.

The strikes hit a fish market and the entrance to a nearby hospital, eyewitnesses and medics said.

However a Saudi spokesman said the coalition had not flown over Hudaydah, blaming the attack on rebels instead.

Six weeks ago, the Saudi-led coalition launched a major offensive to drive Houthi rebels out of the city.

Aid agencies have previously warned that any disruption to vital supplies coming through the key Red Sea port could affect millions of Yemenis, who rely on them to survive.

The Red Cross tweeted that it was sending medical supplies to help treat those severely wounded in Thursday's attack.

Among those killed or injured in Thursday's strikes were local fishermen who were attending the market on the sea front.

Eyewitnesses described seeing debris and two damaged ambulances close to a local hospital.

"The number of people killed in the two attacks has reached 20," a doctor at Hudaydah's main al-Thawra hospital told AFP news agency, adding that at least 60 people had been admitted with injuries.

Other reports put the death toll higher.

For a little more than three years, Yemen has been locked in a seemingly intractable civil war that has killed nearly 10,000 people - two-thirds of them civilians - and pushed millions to the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations.

Fighting began in 2014 when the Houthi Shia Muslim rebel movement took advantage of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi's weakness and seized control of northern Saada province and neighbouring areas. The Houthis went on to take the capital Sanaa, forcing Mr Hadi into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The conflict escalated dramatically in March 2015, when Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states - backed by the US, UK, and France - began air strikes against the Houthis, with the declared aim of restoring Mr Hadi's government.

Speaking to the BBC last month, Mr Hadi said that military intervention by the Saudi-led coalition had gone on longer than expected, but said that the alternative option was far worse. </s> At least 20 people in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah have been killed in air raids carried out by a Saudi and UAE-led coalition battling Yemen's Houthi rebels, medical sources said.

The strikes on Thursday, which fell close to the city's main public hospital, al-Thawra, hit the strategic city's fishing port and fish market.

"The number of people killed in the two attacks has reached 20," a doctor in the Red Sea city told AFP news agency, with other medical sources putting the number of wounded admitted to hospital at 60.

Medical sources told the Reuters news agency that the death toll stood at 26, while the Houthi-affiliated SABA news agency put the number of fatalities at 30, adding that 50 others were wounded.

"Rescue workers told journalists how they saw body parts all over the fish market that was the target of the air strikes," said Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow, reporting from Djibouti.

"The fish market is just 20 metres away from the al-Thawra hospital, which is one of the handful of medical facilities that are still operational in Hodeidah."

Adow added that authorities in Hodeidah said these air strikes "were largely unexpected because both the Houthi fighters and the Saudi-UAE coalition had announced that they were going to cease hostilities in and around the port of Hodeidah to give UN peace efforts a chance".

Meanwhile, the International Red Cross which supports the al-Thawra hospital sent surgical supplies that will be enough to treat up to 50 patients who are in critical condition.

"These air strikes come at a time when aid agencies are warning of renewed outbreaks of diseases. The country's water and sanitation have been largely destroyed by these air strikes," said Adow.

Yemeni government forces launched an offensive to retake the strategic port city earlier in June with the help of a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

While the coalition has been able to retake Hodeidah's airport from the rebels, its port remains in the hands of the Iran-aligned movement.

Hodeidah has been under the control of the Houthis since 2014, along with other west coast ports and much of northern Yemen.

The city's seaport was responsible for delivering 70 percent of Yemen's imports - mostly humanitarian aid, food and fuel - before 2015. Yet, the Saudis say that the Houthis, who reportedly generate $30m to $40m a month in revenue from the port, are using it to smuggle in weapons from Iran.

The war in Yemen, the region's poorest country, started in 2014 after the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels seized control of the capital, Sanaa, and began pushing south towards the country's third-biggest city Aden.

Concerned by the rise of the Houthi rebels, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states launched a military offensive in 2015 in the form of a massive air campaign aimed at reinstalling the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Since then, more than 10,000 people have been killed and at least 40,000 wounded, mostly from Saudi-led air raids.

In retaliation, the Houthis have launched dozens of missiles at the kingdom. Saudi authorities say over the past three years 90 ballistic missiles were fired by the rebels.

Multiple rounds of United Nations-brokered peace talks have all failed to achieve any breakthrough. </s> An airstrike launched by the Saudi-led coalition has reportedly killed at least 26 people and injured dozens of civilians in the vicinity of a general hospital in Hodeidah, Yemen.Footage from the scene of the alleged bombing shown by Yemen's Almasirah television station, which is linked to the Houthi rebels, showed what appeared to be bodies of multiple people covered by blankets., local freelance journalist Ahmad Algohbary reported.Algohbary said. Reuters sites local medical sources as saying that 26 people were killed and 35 others injured on Thursday in coalition attacks on Hudaydah port and the fishing market.The Saudi-led coalition has denied the allegations that it was behind the deadly raid on the hospital, laying the blame on Houthi rebels. Coalition spokesmanYoussef al-Hadri, a spokesman for the Houthi-affiliated Health Ministry, called the alleged bombing a "war crime" speaking to the German press agency DPA.Hodeidah, a port city held by the Houthi rebels, is besieged by the Riyadh-led coalition trying to put ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi back in power in Yemen. The intervention has lasted for over three years and caused what the UN calls world's largest humanitarian disaster witnessed today. </s> At least 17 people have been killed in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a marketplace in the town of Al Hudaydah in Yemen, medics told an RT stringer.More than 12 people were injured, with the medics warning that the death toll may rise to over two dozen.According to AFP,The militants allegedly fled to the market to escape the bombardment, but were still targeted by the warplanes.A military source close to Saudi-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi told AFP that the rebels used civilians as "human shields."Al-Masirah TV channel, controlled by the Houthis, reported that 27 people were killed and dozens wounded in the attack.The Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah is Yemen's fourth-largest city, with a population of around 400,000, located in the west of the country.Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has headed an international military coalition carrying out an unrelenting campaign of airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in October that the Saudi coalition, "with direct military support from the US and assistance from the UK," conducted at least 58 "unlawful airstrikes."In late February, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said that around 10,000 people have been killed in the country since Saudi Arabia intervened, with 7 million people close to starvation.According to World Health Organization figures, more than 7,400 people have been killed, with around 1,400 of them being children. </s> Sanaa, Aug 3 (IANS) At least 20 people were killed and 50 others injured on Thursday when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a popular fish market in Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, a medical official told Xinhua.

The market is just about five meters away from the main gate of the al-Thawra Hospital, the official said by telephone on condition of anonymity.

“At least 20 were confirmed killed in an initial toll and up to 50 others wounded in the airstrike,” said the official.

Many bodies and injured people were still trapped inside the market as the rescue teams could not reach the other side of the market because of the continuing air and sea bombardments, he added.

The attack was the latest in a series of airstrikes launched by the coalition against Houthi targets in Yemen.

Last week, a Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed at least five people of a family in the country’s northern province of Saada.

The impoverished Arab country has been locked in a civil war since the Houthi rebels overran much of Yemen militarily and seized all northern provinces in 2014, including the capital Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia has led an Arab military coalition to intervene in the Yemen war since 2015 to support the government of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

More than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, have been killed in the war, and about 3 million have been displaced. </s> (Reuters) - Twenty six people were killed and 35 others were wounded in Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the fishing port and fish market in the Yemeni city of Hodeidah, Yemeni medical sources told Reuters on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia and Sunni Muslim allies have been fighting in Yemen for three years against the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of north Yemen including the capital Sanaa and drove a Saudi-backed government into exile in 2014.

There was no immediate comment from the Saudi-led coalition. </s> At least 24 civilians were killed in an air raid Sunday on a market in northern Yemen, a medical official and witnesses said, blaming the Saudi-led coalition battling Yemeni rebels.

Most of the casualties worked in the Mashnaq market in the rebel-controlled Saada province on the Saudi border, an official at a nearby hospital told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses said the market was a centre for trafficking in qat, a leafy stimulant plant that is widely used in Yemen but illegal in Saudi Arabia.

One of the witnesses said some of the casualties had "just returned from a trip across the border."

The Saudi-led Arab military coalition has been accused of air strikes in Yemen for more than two years against areas controlled by the Shiite Huthi rebels.

Saada itself has come under heavy bombing since 2015, when the coalition intervened to support the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in its fight against the Iran-backed Huthis.

The coalition claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on the rebel-held capital Sanaa in October 2016 which targeted a gathering of mourners at a funeral ceremony, killing more than 140 people.

The Huthis have also accused the Saudi-led coalition of a raid last month that killed 23 civilians, including women and children, in the southwestern city of Taez.

The Saudi-led coalition — which accused the rebels of using civilians as "human shields" — has not claimed responsibility for that attack.

The rebels, who control a string of strategic ports along the Red Sea coastline and the norther highlands that border Saudi Arabia, have sporadically launched rocket attacks across the border.

In late January, the Huthis attacked a Saudi warship in the Red Sea, killing two sailors.

More than 8,000 people have been killed in the past two years and tens of thousands wounded in the war in Yemen, according to the World Health Organization.

The UN has called Yemen the "largest humanitarian crisis in the world" and warns that 17 million people, or two-thirds of the population, face a serious threat of famine this year.

More than 900 people have died of cholera in recent weeks in the second outbreak of the deadly infection in less than a year in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world long before the war. </s> At least 55 people have been killed after warplanes of the Saudi-led military coalition hit a hospital and a fishing harbor in Yemen’s western province of Hudaydah.

Yemen’s Health Ministry said the Thursday brutal strikes also left at least 130 wounded, some in critical condition.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, citing its correspondent, reported that Saudi-led jets struck al-Thorah Hospital in the provincial capital Hudaydah and a fishing port in the province almost simultaneously.

According to the correspondent, the death toll was expected to rise due to the magnitude of the airstrikes, particularly on the hospital.

The report also said that the attacked hospital had launched an urgent appeal for Yemeni citizens to donate blood.

On Wednesday, at least nine fishermen were killed after Saudi-led warplanes targeted their ship off the coast of Hudaydah.

Saudi Arabia and some 20 of its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, launched a brutal war, code-named Operation Decisive Storm, against Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and crush the popular Ansarullah movement.

The offensive initially consisted of a bombing campaign, but was later coupled with a naval blockade and the deployment of ground forces into Yemen.

The imposed war, however, has so far failed to achieve its goal, thanks to firm resistance mounted by Yemeni troops and Houthi fighters in defense of the city. The war was also launched despite warnings that it would compound the impoverished nation’s humanitarian crisis.

The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured until then. The war and the accompanying blockade have also caused famine across Yemen.

The Saudi-led aggression has also taken a heavy toll on the country's infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories. The United Nations has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

Several Western countries, the United States and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance. </s> Airstrikes carried out by Saudi-led coalition jets struck a funeral ceremony in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, killing or injuring 616 people,according to the local health minister.

A missile tore through the hall of the building, leaving many dead and injured, Reuters reported earlier, quoting eyewitnesses.

According to the news agency, a medic said that he saw “mutilated and charred bodies,” adding that the funeral was being held for the deceased father of the Houthi rebels’ Interior Minister. Military and security officials from the rebel movement are among the victims, according to the outlet.

AP earlier reported that at least 45 people had been killed in the bombardment.

“The place has been turned into a lake of blood,” a rescuer, Murad Tawfiq, was quoted by the news agency as saying.

Earlier images of a destroyed building, partly still aflame, have emerged on social media, with some people alleging the devastation was caused by a Saudi-led coalition strike.

The Riyadh-led coalition meanwhile brushed aside all accusations. In a statement, the alliance said that “no air operations have been conducted in the area of the blast,” TASS reported.
Alleged Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on a fish market and hospital entrance kill at least 20 people in Al Hudaydah, Yemen. A Saudi spokesman denies that its jets were in the area at the time, and blames rebels instead.