SANAA (Dispatches) – Saudi airstrikes killed at least 20 people at a wedding in a village in northwestern Yemen late on Sunday, residents and medical sources have said.
The head of al-Jumhouri hospital in Hajjah province told Reuters by telephone that the hospital had received 40 bodies, most of them torn to pieces, and that 46 people had been injured, including 30 children, in airstrikes that hit a wedding gathering.
Medics, and residents of Bani Qais where the wedding was taking place, told news agencies that 20 people attending the celebration were killed and at least 40 injured, while Doctors Without Borders put those injured at 45.
"We take this report very seriously and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are," a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition told Reuters.
Al-Masirah, the Houthi-controlled TV station, said on its Twitter account that 33 people had been killed and 55 wounded.
The television separately said a senior Houthi official was killed in a Saudi air raid last week.
The head of the Houthi administration in northern Yemen, Saleh al-Samad, was killed Thursday, al-Masirah TV reported.
Saudi Arabia and its allies have been accused of multiple war crimes by rights groups since entering the war in Yemen in 2015.
Its bombs have killed hundreds of civilians at hospitals, schools and markets.
The Saudi military conducts internal investigations and has regularly cleared itself of wrongdoing.
The Western-backed alliance has been fighting a war for three years against Yemen. It has launched thousands of airstrikes in a campaign to restore a former regime allied to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia claims it does not target civilians and has set up an investigation committee into alleged mass casualty airstrikes which have mostly cleared the coalition of any blame.
The Yemen war has killed more than 14,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven the country to the verge of famine, according to the United Nations.