5 Yemeni children killed in mortar shell attack

Indiscriminate shelling by fighters of the Shiite Houthi group killed five children and injured three others in Yemen's southwestern province of Taiz on Thursday, a government official told Xinhua.

The Houthi rebels fired mortar shells at a residential neighborhood in the outskirts of Taiz, leaving five children killed and three others injured, the government source said on condition of anonymity.

"Some of the mortar shells struck a house and left about three family members killed," the source said.

"Other shells bombed a nearby house and killed two more children and critically injured three others," he added.

Yemen's official Saba News Agency confirmed in a short statement that "the Houthi militia committed a new massacre in Taiz by killing children."

Last month, random shelling by the Houthi rebels killed 74 civilians, including 17 children and three women, and wounded 143 others, according to local Yemeni humanitarian organizations.

Local Yemeni officials said that the pro-Houthi forces usually targeted the residential neighborhoods controlled by the Saudi-backed government in Taiz with mortar shells and rockets, causing casualties among innocent civilians.

Yemen's internationally-backed government, allied with the Saudi-led Arab military coalition, has been battling Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels over control of the country for over two years.

The coalition began a military air campaign in March 2015 to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to the power.

The coalition also imposed air and sea blockade to prevent weapons from reaching Houthis, who had invaded the capital Sanaa militarily and seized most of the northern Yemeni provinces.

UN statistics showed more than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, had been killed since the coalition intervened in the Yemeni civil war that also displaced around 3 million.

The impoverished Arab country is also suffering the world's largest cholera epidemic since April, with about 5,000 cases reported every day.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)