Dozens killed in airstrike on Yemeni hotel

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/dozens-killed-in-airstrike-on-yemeni-hotel

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Dozens of people are feared killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on a small hotel north of the Yemeni capital, the latest mass casualty event in a war that is now in its third year.

News agencies quoted local officials and aid groups as saying at least 35 bodies had been pulled from the rubble of the hotel in Arhab, on the northern outskirts of Sana’a. It was unclear whether they were members of the Houthi rebel forces fighting against the Saudi-backed government, or civilians.

Officials and witnesses told the Associated Press that the death toll was 60 and that the majority of those killed were rebels. Witnesses told Reuters that the hotel building had totally collapsed.

Aid workers said rescue personnel were still sifting through the rubble and the death toll was likely to rise.

There has been mounting concern over civilian casualties in the war, which pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels allied with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012, against forces loyal to Saleh’s successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi-led coalition air power.

Yemen’s infrastructure has been decimated in the war, creating a humanitarian crisis. Nearly 3 million people are internally displaced and 17 million are in need of food aid. More than 370,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the country and more than 1,800 people have died as a result of the illness. A total of more than 10,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the war in 2015.

International observers have repeatedly accused the Saudi-led coalition of failing to protect civilians in the conflict. Activists have called on western countries including the US and Britain to cease their military support for the coalition.

Sana’a is packed with armed men and armoured vehicles, fuelling fears of open clashes between Saleh’s forces and the Houthis. Saleh has complained that the rebels have sidelined him and his loyalists, leaving them out of military and political decisions. The two also differ on recent UN initiatives aimed at ending the war.

A report by international aid agencies last week said Yemen had been hit by more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes.

The number of airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 totalled 5,676, up from 3,936 for all of 2016, according to the report by the Protection Cluster in Yemen, which is led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).