In a Week of Deadly Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths, Saudi Arabia Adds School Bus and 50 Yemeni Children to the List

by Ahmed Abdulkareem from Mint Press News

The late morning sun conspired with a cloudless blue sky to picturesquely frame the city of Dhahian in southern Saada province. Suddenly the serenity was broken by the loud piercing shriek of fighter jets over the quiet village, followed by a deafening explosion. When the thick black smoke finally began to dissipate, more than 20 mothers discovered a school bus carrying their children had been transformed into a hellish scene: choking dust, smoldering shops, and the charred corpses of children buried under the mangled school bus. Anguished moans and screams of grief and pain filled the air.

At a bed in the Jomhouri Hospital in Saada, four-year-old Mohammed was receiving first aid when he came to the realization that he was still alive but that more than 35 of his classmates, older and younger, lay dead in beds near him as if they were asleep. Others were lying in torn, blood-stained clothing along with school bags, fighting death in the same room.

Mohammed was one of the 80 civilians wounded on Thursday in fresh U.S.-Saudi strikes that targeted a school bus carrying children to summer camp on Dhahian’s outskirts in Yemen’s northwestern province of Saada…

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