Women, children martyred as Saudi jets bomb mosque in Yemen

Saudi warplanes have bombed a mosque in Amran Province in western Yemen, martyring seven people, including children and women.

Yemen’s al-Masirah TV reported that the victims lost their lives in an airstrike early on Monday. They were from the same family and had taken refuge in the mosque in order to avoid Saudi attacks.

Earlier reports said five civilians were martyred and two others went missing after the attack. But the martyrdom toll rose after the bodies of two children were recovered from the rubble of the targeted mosque.

According to the report, the Saudi warplanes have carried out 11 airstrikes on the province over the past hours.

The attacks come despite a call by Yemen’s Ansarullah Movement for cessation of strikes.

An Ansarullah official on Friday said the movement would stop targeting Saudi territories with drones and ballistic missiles, hoping Riyadh would reciprocate the gesture.

President of the Supreme Political Council in the Yemeni capital Mahdi al-Mashat, however, warned that the Yemenis “would not hesitate to launch a period of great pain” if their call for peace were ignored.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia launched a military operation against the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah in violation of a 2018 UN-brokered ceasefire agreement after the heart of the kingdom's oil industry came under a brazen attack. 

It less than a week after the Yemeni forces launched retaliatory drone attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility.

Attacks by 10 Yemeni drones on the key oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais on September 14 shut down about 50 percent of the kingdom’s crude and gas production, cutting the state oil giant’s crude oil supply by around 5.7 million barrels per day.

ME