Middle East & North Africa
Yemen: death toll from the strikes east of Sanaa reaches 44, say the Houthis – what the coalition said about three launchers
The Houthi health ministry says 44 were killed, 21 of them children, in the November 7 air strikes on al-Sariyah east of Sanaa. The Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed three missile launchers.
The number of dead from the Saturday, November 7 air strikes on the village of al-Sariyah, in the Bani Hushaysh district east of Sanaa, has risen to 44. The new toll was given late on Sunday, November 8 by Anis al-Asbahi, spokesman for the health ministry of the Houthi administration. Among the dead are 21 children and 10 women. The injured number 40, among them 8 children and 9 women.
The Houthis attribute the strikes to Saudi Arabia. The Houthi-controlled Saba agency raises the total of dead and wounded to 84, while rescue teams continue to search for missing people under the rubble of houses, so the number may rise. The figures have not been confirmed by an independent source.
The toll has been rising steadily. On Saturday the Houthi health minister spoke of 32 dead and 38 injured in a non-final count, and on Sunday the dead had reached 33, as in our report on the six Houthi operations and the damage to the Aramco tower in Riyadh. The movement presented those operations as retaliation for the strike. It is one of the deadliest strikes of the new phase of the war. A day earlier, on Friday, November 6, at least 20 people were killed in a market in Taiz, with the Houthis and the government blaming each other.
The coalition talks about launchers
The Saudi side announced strikes on Houthi launchers. The spokesman of the coalition supporting Yemen’s legitimate government, Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki, said on Sunday that two ballistic missile launchers were destroyed in Saada, which according to the coalition were used in the attempted attack on Riyadh, and a third in Sanaa, from which a missile was fired toward the Eastern Province. His statements were published by the official Saudi agency SPA.
Tension continued on Monday, November 9. Saudi authorities sent Riyadh residents a message that the area was “under hostile air threat” and urged them to stay in a safe place away from windows and doors, before lifting the warning minutes later. On Sunday the Houthis had claimed attacks on the King Abdullah Financial District, the capital’s airport, Aramco tanks and Abqaiq. The Saudi energy ministry confirmed that an Aramco administrative building in Riyadh suffered minor damage from debris.
Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis resumed in July, when the 2022 truce reached with UN mediation collapsed. Since then the UN counts more than 1,600 dead and more than 300,000 displaced. The Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014 and the Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015 on behalf of the internationally recognised government, which now asks Iran to stop arming the Houthis.
