SANAA: A Saudi-led air strike has killed at least 10 civilians in Yemen’s Marib province, a local official said on Sunday.

Witnesses and health officials said an air strike by a Saudi-led coalition has struck a wedding procession east of Yemen’s capital, killing 10 women.

They said the Sunday air strike targeted the women as they marched to a village in Maarib province. They said the bride was among the women, but it was not immediately clear whether she was wounded.

It’s a tradition in rural Yemen for the bride’s female friends and relatives to escort her to the wedding ceremony, where the groom awaits.The local official, speaking from Marib east of Sanaa, said the civilians were in a vehicle in the Hreib Karameesh district when it was hit overnight by the air strike.

A Saudi-led coalition has been waging an air campaign against the Houthis since March 2015, in an attempt to shore up the internationally recognised government of Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi.

More than 8,750 people have been killed in the conflict since the intervention in the impoverished Arab Peninsula country, where more than 2,000 people have also died of cholera this year.

Humanitarian aid groups have urged all sides to show restraint, and the UN has listed Yemen as the world’s number one humanitarian crisis, with seven million people on the brink of famine.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2017