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 A Saudi-led Arab coalition that has air supremacy over Yemen has
strongly denied any role in the wedding party carnage, and a
coalition spokesman suggested that local militias may have fired the
projectiles.
The U.S.-backed coalition has been targeting the Iranian-allied
Houthis mostly by air across Yemen since March with the goal of
ousting the war's dominant armed faction from regions it has seized
since last year, including the capital Sanaa in the north, and to
restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Residents said on Monday that two missiles tore through tents in the
Red Sea village of Al-Wahijah, near the ancient port of Al-Mokha,
where a local man affiliated with the Houthi group was holding his
wedding reception.
The area is deemed the gateway to the Bab al-Mandeb strait
connecting the Red Sea with the Arabian Sea, a vital route for oil
tanker and other maritime traffic between Asia and Europe.
 A resident of Al-Wahijah had said on Monday that 12 women, eight
children and seven men had died in the air strike, and a local
official put the death toll at 30.
On Tuesday, a medical source at Maqbana hospital, where most of the
casualties were taken, said the death toll had climbed to 131
people, including many women and children.
The United Nations and international rights groups have expressed
alarm at the escalating number of civilian deaths in Yemen - at
least 2,355 out of more than 4,500 people killed from the end of
March to Sept. 24, according to figures released by the U.N. human
rights office in Geneva on Tuesday.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the high death toll at the
wedding event and warned that any intentional attack on civilians
violates international law and must be investigated.
ARAB COALITION DENIAL
Arab coalition spokesman Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asseri said
there had been no air operations in the area in the al-Mokha area
for three days so "this is totally false news".
He added that the coalition would concede a mistake if it made one
but Yemen's conflict was chaotic with a grab bag of armed groups
active, and that civilians sometimes could not differentiate between
cannon, mortar and Katyusha rocket fire.
In Geneva, U.N. human rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said
it had a team on the ground in Yemen trying to verify details of the
wedding party bloodshed.
“The (Hadi-led) government in exile seemed to have acknowledged it
and said it was a mistake ... I don't think we have much doubt that
this incident took place and it is a grave incident," Colville told
a news conference.
He also said the coalition’s naval blockade of Yemen’s main seaports
was exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in Yemen. World Food Program
spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said 10 of Yemen’s 22 governorates were
so short of food that famines were looming.
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The United States is the main arms supplier to the Gulf Arab
coalition. In April, U.S. officials said Washington was expanding
intelligence-sharing with Saudi Arabia to provide more details about
potential Houthi targets.
Al-Wahijah is located in Taiz province, which the Houthis captured
in March as they began advancing on the strategic southern port city
of Aden, to which Hadi had decamped after losing Sanaa, before he
was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia.
Gulf-backed forces retook Aden in July, allowing Hadi to re-base
there after six months of exile in Riyadh, before thrusting
northwards to take on the Houthis in Taiz and ultimately Sanaa.
For Hadi’s Sunni Gulf Arab patrons, returning him to Yemen
represented a moment of vindication for what they see as a wider
struggle against expansionary meddling in the region by Iran's
Shi'ite Muslim theocracy, a charge Tehran denies.
On Sunday, residents and medics said helicopters flying from Saudi
Arabia attacked a village in the northern Yemeni province of Hajjah,
killing at least 30 people. Saudi authorities dismissed this report
as "totally false" too, while U.N. rights spokesman Colville said
the details were being checked.
The air strike campaign has resulted in several mass killings of
civilians, including 36 people at a water bottling plant in August
and 25 workers at a milk factory in April.
Around 100 Saudi soldiers and security personnel and some 30
civilians have also been killed in cross-border fire into southern
Saudi Arabia by Houthis and allied troops loyal to former president
Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In the latest such attack, the Saudi interior ministry said on
Tuesday one of its servicemen had been killed in the southern Jizan
region by projectiles fired on Monday from Yemen.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean, Hadeel al-Sayegh and Marwa
Al-Malik in Gulf region, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by
Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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