Yemen mourners gather in Sanaa following deadly village strike

Crowds filled the streets of Yemen's capital on Wednesday to attend funeral services for dozens of civilians killed in an aerial attack blamed on the Saudi-led military coalition.

The memorial service took place at the Mosque of the People in Sanaa, where mourners assembled around caskets covered in white fabric that displayed the names and portraits of the victims. Many in the gathering, dressed in traditional robes and carrying firearms or ceremonial daggers, chanted anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans during the gathering, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Following the mosque prayers, the funeral cortege transported the remains to the nearby rural settlement of al-Shariya for interment. Houthi officials stated that an air raid hit the village on Saturday, resulting in 44 deaths, including 21 children, and leaving 40 people wounded. Houthi-run Almasirah television further stated that a second bombardment struck first responders as they attempted to extract victims from the rubble. The casualty figures and account of the secondary strike could not be independently confirmed by AFP.

Local residents expressed profound grief as the dead were brought to the village for burial. Daifallah Sarhan, a farmer from the area, told AFP earlier in the week that the victims were innocent civilians who were merely eating a meal with their relatives when the bombs fell.

The deaths in al-Shariya are part of an intensifying escalation that began over the summer, which United Nations data indicates has claimed over 1,600 lives and forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes across the nation.

Yemen has endured conflict since 2014, when the Houthi movement captured Sanaa, triggering military intervention the following year by a Saudi-led coalition backing the internationally recognized government. A tentative truce established in 2022 collapsed this past July after Houthi authorities permitted an aircraft from Iran to touch down in Sanaa, flouting Saudi airspace restrictions and triggering renewed cross-border hostilities.

The conflict expanded rapidly as the Houthis imposed a blockade on Saudi maritime traffic, targeted vessels and energy installations, and captured the remainder of Yemen's shoreline along the Red Sea. In response to mounting Saudi airstrikes, Houthi cross-border assaults have killed 26 individuals within Saudi Arabia since the renewed fighting began.

Hostilities have reached deep into Saudi territory in recent days. The Saudi-led coalition announced on social media platform X on Wednesday that it had shot down three cruise missiles fired by Houthi forces toward the capital city of Riyadh. That incident followed a strike on Sunday that damaged a high-rise tower owned by the state oil firm Saudi Aramco in Riyadh's financial hub, alongside recurring attacks aimed at the city's international airport.