At least 22 people, including children, have been killed in a bomb blast south of the city of Marib, an area where heavy fighting is taking place, internationally-recognized government officials said Monday, accusing Shiite Houthi rebels of committing it.
At least “22 people, including children, were killed and 19 others wounded in a Houthi bombing in al-Juba area” on Sunday night, a government official said on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, the Minister of Information of the internationally recognized government, Muammar al-Iriani, had announced via Twitter that 29 people, including women and children, had been killed in the bombing.
“This horrific massacre is part of the systematic killing of civilians by the Houthi terrorist paramilitary organization,” he said.
The Houthis, who have not responded to the allegations so far, have been conducting a large-scale operation since February to seize Marib, the capital of the oil-rich northern Yemeni province, the last stronghold of the government in the north of the country.
On Thursday, 13 people, including a child, were killed in a rocket attack on the house of a tribal leader south of Marib, according to a source close to the government army, who blamed Shiite insurgents in Iran for the attack.
The hostilities in Marib have escalated in recent weeks. The guerrillas assure that they are coming. They stressed last week that the occupation of the city is only a “matter of time”.
The Saudi-led military alliance air force that intervened in the war in Yemen in March 2015 is providing support to ground government troops trying to repel a rebel attack in Marib.
For weeks, the Riyadh alliance has been reporting tens to hundreds of guerrilla casualties in its air strikes almost daily; however, its reports can not be confirmed by independent sources; their losses.
The conflict of more than seven years in the poorest country of the Arabian Peninsula has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians, and displaced millions more, according to international aid organizations. For the UN, the worst humanitarian disaster in the world is unfolding in Yemen.
