Saudi-led airstrikes kill 27 civilians in Yemen

At least 27 civilians, mostly children and women, were killed on Saturday in three Yemeni provinces by airstrikes from a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, officials and residents said.

Early Saturday morning, the Saudi-led air strikes hit residents' homes in two villages of al-Sharaf and Mabaran in al-Salo district of the southwestern province of Taiz, killing 10 villagers on the spot and flattering several mud-brick houses to the ground, according to the local officials and the residents.

The death tool later the day rose rapidly up to 17, mostly children and women, and seven others were fatally injured, said the officials and residents.

"The hospital receiving the injured lacked medicine and necessary equipment, so the death toll is more likely to increase in the next hours," a local official told Xinhua by phone.

In the far north province of Saada, officials and residents witnessed an airstrike targeting a car driving on a public road in Bani al-Sayyah area of Razih district on Saturday, killing a family of five members, including their infant.

The witnesses said the family was trying to flee the heavy air raids on the province, which is the stronghold of dominant Shiite Houthi movement.

In the central province of Marib, another family of five were all killed when the Saudi-led airstrike targeted their car in Habbab valley in east of the province on Saturday afternoon, local officials, residents and witnesses.

An official told Xinhua that the family was escaping the intensified air strikes on the villages and farms of Marib.

Local officials and residents also reported dozens of other air attacks on several regions across northern Yemeni provinces, most of the strikes burned farms and destroyed villagers' houses.

Dozens of cows and livestock of the villagers were also killed in the Saturday air strikes according to local authorities' reports to the agriculture ministry, a ministry official told Xinhua.

Saturday's air strikes against civilians were the latest in a series of raids carried out by the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition.

Earlier this month, the airstrikes hit a funeral hall in the capital Sanaa, killing 140 mourners, including children, and wounded over 600 others.

Saudi coalition spokesman general Ahmed Asiri said the strikes were based on wrong information, apologizing to the families' victims.

Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen conflict in March last year to restore its ally President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to power, after Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh fought a revolution against "Hadi government corruption" and drove Hadi with his cabinet to flee into exile.

The Saudi-led coalition has ever since failed to restore Hadi or recapture northern provinces from the allied Houthi and Saleh forces which also control the capital Sanaa.

The Saudi-led airstrikes and ground combat have killed over 10,000 Yemenis, mostly children and women, and forced more than two million to flee their homes.

The latest round of peace efforts by the United Nations appeared to fail to end the 19-month long war in Yemen after apparently both rival, Houthis and their foe Hadi, rejected latest UN peace plan presented by UN Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed last week.