Airstrikes in Yemen's northern al-Jawf province killed least seven civilians on Wednesday, according to residents and an official with the Houthi rebel group who put the death toll at nine.
A Houthi health ministry spokesman said the Saudi-led coalition struck a residential area in the al-Hazm district of al-Jawf province just days after a Sunday airstrike in the northwestern governorate of Hajjah.
Sunday's Hajjah strike killed seven children and two women, and injured an additional two children and women, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
The Houthi movement blamed the Saudi-led coalition for both incidents.
Coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki told Reuters that reports of Wednesday’s airstrikes will be investigated, echoing a similar statement he made about Sunday's attack.
“We take this report very seriously and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are, using an internationally approved, independent process,” al-Malki said.
Violence between the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who control the capital, Sana’a, and a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the internationally recognized government, has resulted in nearly 1,000 civilian causalities during the first six months of 2020, according to OCHA.
Fighting erupted after a cease-fire expired at the end of May that was initiated due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It is incomprehensible that in the middle of the COVID pandemic, when options for a cease-fire are on the table, civilians continue being killed in Yemen,” said Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, while confirming causalities of Sunday's airstrikes earlier this week.
“Yemen can’t take much more,” Grande said.
Largely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the conflict has killed more than 100,000 people and caused what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
