140 killed, hundreds injured as airstrikes hit Yemen funeral

More than 140 people were killed and more than 525 injured when airstrikes hit a funeral ceremony in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, a senior UN official has said, as Houthi rebels blamed the attack on the Saudi-led coalition.

The dead and wounded include senior military and security officials from the ranks of the Shia Houthi rebels fighting the internationally recognised government of president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi as well as their allies, loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The death toll was one of the largest in any single incident since the Saudi-led alliance began military operations to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power following his ousting by the Iran-aligned Houthis in March 2015.

“The Saudi aggression committed a major crime today, by attacking a mourning hall for the al-Roweishan family, targeting residents in the hall,” Ismail told a news conference in Sanaa.

In the aftermath of the strike on Saturday, hundreds of body parts were found strewn in and outside the hall. Rescuers collected them in sacks. “The place has been turned into a lake of blood,” said one rescuer, Murad Tawfiq.

Ambulances rushed to the site to ferry the wounded to hospitals. In radio broadcasts, the health ministry summoned off-duty doctors and called on residents to donate blood. Rescuers, meanwhile, sifted through the rubble in search of more casualties but a fire hindered their efforts.

The funeral was for Ali al-Rawishan, the father of the interior minister Galal al-Rawishan, an ally of both the Houthi movement and their chief ally, Saleh.

Residents said aircraft fired two missiles at the hall, where hundreds of mourners had gathered to offer condolences.

One missile tore through the building, setting it on fire and sending a large plume of smoke above the area. The other landed nearby.

Witnesses and medics said a missile hit the hall in the south of the capital, destroying the building. They described ambulances ferrying casualties from the scene, where a plume of black smoke rose into the sky.

In a strongly worded rebuke, the White House said it may consider cutting its support to the Saudi-led military campaign.

The Saudi-led coalition has been providing air support for Hadi's forces in a civil war that has killed more than 10,000 people since March 2015 and displaced more than three million.

Fighting has intensified since August when U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait ended without an agreement.

Saudi Arabia intervened in March 2015 to support the Yemeni government against Houthi rebels in control of Sana’a. It has faced repeated accusations that its campaign has breached international humanitarian law, while the Houthi rebels are also accused of human rights violations, including the use of landmines and indiscriminate shelling.

More than half of Yemen’s 28 million people are already short of food, the UN has said, and children are particularly badly hit, with hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation. There are 370,000 children enduring severe malnutrition that weakens their immune system, according to Unicef, and 1.5 million are going hungry.