Airstrike in Yemen kills 27 in wedding party

At least 27 people, most of them women and children, were killed on Monday in an airstrike on a wedding party in southwestern Yemen, a local official and residents said.

A local resident said 12 women, eight children and seven men died in the airstrike, which struck two tents in the village of Wahijah, near the Red Sea port city of Mokha, at a wedding for a local man affiliated with Yemen's dominant Houthi group. A local official put the death toll at 30.

Residents described bodies mutilated by the attack. A number of other casualties were rushed to a nearby hospital, they said.

A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition could not immediately be reached for a comment.

Monday's airstrike came a day after helicopters from the Saudi-led coalition struck houses in a village in northern Yemen on Sunday, killing at least 30 people, most of them civilians.

A Saudi-led coalition has been pounding the Iran-allied Houthi group from the air for six months, trying to eject it from the capital, Sanaa, which it seized a year ago, and restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.

Wahijah is in Taiz province, which the Houthis captured in March as they began advancing on the southern port city of Aden, where Hadi was based before he was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia.

Reuters