Saudi-led coalition air strikes in the Yemeni capital Sanaa killed 18 members of the same family, including women and children on Monday (September 21), residents and witnesses said.
Another two other people from another family were also killed in the strikes, which hit at least two homes. More than 30 people were sleeping at the time.
In one home, the direct hit forced the roof to collapse.
Medics rushed to the scene and residents helped search for survivors in the rubble.
A crane was brought in to help lift the collapsed roof and damaged cars out of the way as rescuers searched for survivors.
Mohammed Mufreh was one of two survivors from the Mufreh family home. He lost 18 relatives in Monday’s air strike.
“My family is made up of 20 people and we have nothing to do with the Houthis or the Salehs (referring to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh). We are citizens, we have nothing to do with one or the other (not the Houthis or the opposition,” he told Reuters at the scene of the air strike.
“They targeted us while we were sleeping. My family is made up of 20 men, women, children and adolescents,” he said.
A second home nearby, the residence of another family, was also hit. Two people from that family were killed in the attack, residents said.
A neighbour, Said Abdullah, described the patriarch of the Mufreh family as a merchant “who went from his shop to his home.”
“They hit him, they struck him in his home, where more than 35 people were living, more than 15 were killed, including men, women and children,” said Abdullah.
The air strikes hit the Hasaba district in northern Sanaa, home to one of the Ahmar tribal leaders, one of the largest and most powerful in Sanaa.
The Ahmars have a long history of conflict with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Since the Houthis took over Sanaa last September, the rebels took control of the neighborhood and some of the Ahmar family properties. Many of the Ahmar family members fled to Saudi Arabia after the Houthi takeover of Sanaa.
Reuters could not independently verify the casualty figures and medics at the scene were reluctant to provide a final tally as the victims were still being pulled from the rubble.
“Three homes all from the Mufreh family, all of them victims. We don’t have an exact casualty statistic right now because there were some 30 people living here, residents of this home, but there are many dead,” Red Crescent medic Salim al-Jalal told Reuters.
At least 30 other people were killed in air strikes by the Saudi-led alliance on a Houthi-held security compound in northern Yemen on Monday, medical sources and officials said, in an escalating campaign that is increasingly claiming civilian lives.
Gulf Arab forces and supporters of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, meanwhile, appear to be making scant progress in a ground offensive in the central desert against battle-hardened Houthi forces who control the capital Sanaa.
The coalition intervened in Yemen in March to restore Hadi after he fled to Saudi Arabia when the Houthis, backed by supporters of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, overran his southern stronghold of Aden.
Almost daily air raids by Saudi-led forces have escalated since the Houthis fired a land-to-land missile at a coalition base in central Marib province two weeks ago, killing more than 60 soldiers, most of them from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
More than 4,500 people have been killed in bloodshed since the Saudi-led intervention, according to United Nations figures.
