Saudi-led airstrike kills 2 Yemeni civilians

SANAA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Two men were killed and three women wounded late on Wednesday when a Saudi-led warplane hit a pickup truck laden with wood in Nihm district northeast of the Yemeni rebel-held capital Sanaa, a security official and residents said.

The airstrike hit the car in Maswarah area, few kilometers away from the battlefront near the central province of Marib, where combat is taking place between the dominant Houthi rebels and coalition-backed government forces of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The targeted family members were collecting wood for cooking due to acute shortage of cooking gas, the official and residents said.

Nihm is about 50 km northeast of the capital Sanaa.

The attack was the latest in a series of airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition air force since the start of the war in Yemen three years ago.

On March 8, the coalition airstrikes hit a farm and a popular market in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, killing eight civilians, according to the local officials and residents.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in the Yemeni conflict in March 2015 to roll back the Iranian-allied Shiite Houthi rebels and to support the internationally-recognized President Hadi, who was forced into exile by the Houthis.

The war has killed over 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, displaced 3 million others and triggered the worst humanitarian crises. Enditem