Missile attack on mosque and religious school kills and injures 29 Yemeni civilians, says minister

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Two missile attacks kill and injure more than 30 people after Saudi Arabian-led coalition strikes on target in popular central district

Missile attack on mosque and religious school kills and injures 29 Yemeni civilians, says minister

The Yemeni government has said at least 29 civilians, including women and children, have been killed by a missile attack on a mosque and a nearby religious school in the capital, Sanaa.

The ministry said those killed, who included two teachers and two girls aged four and four years, were killed in the capital on Friday night when their residential buildings were hit by Saudi-led coalition missiles.

It also said 30 people were injured. It did not name the specific attacks.

Iran-backed Huthi rebels have frequently been accused of firing indiscriminate rockets into nearby residential areas in retaliation for Saudi strikes against them in northern Yemen.

A UN monitoring mission to report to the UN security council on the impact of the conflict on civilians warned in a report last month that Huthi rebels “continue to target residential areas with ground-to-ground missiles as well as coastal areas in the central region, resulting in the loss of civilian lives, damage to property and displacement”.

Sanaa has become a battle zone in Yemen’s civil war, which pits the Iran-backed Huthis against a Saudi-led coalition backing the government of president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

More than 5,300 people have been killed in Yemen since March 2015, with 30% of the war-torn country’s population – 16 million people – in need of humanitarian aid.

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