U.S.-Backed Saudi Coalition Bombs Another Funeral in Yemen, Killing 8 Women, Child

A U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed at least eight women and a child at a funeral reception near Yemen's capital, Sanaa, on Thursday, witnesses told AFP.

At least 10 more women were also wounded in the raid, medics said. All of the victims were civilians.

The funeral reception was being held at a civilian home, and there were no other buildings visible in the area, AFP reported. The building was totally destroyed.

A source from Sanaa told AlterNet that the funeral was being held for victims of another coalition airstrike. A Yemeni filmmaker and photographer said a man she knows had to pull his dead mother out of the rubble. The woman had been mourning another killed in a separate U.S.-backed bombing.

The attack took place in the district of Arhab, some 25 miles north of Sanaa.

A statement by the Saudi-led coalition said it was "investigating the reports" of civilian casualties.

No other party in the war in Yemen uses planes. Yemen's Houthi rebels, who took control of the capital in late 2014, do not have an air force.

Prominent Yemeni analyst Hisham Al-Omeisy, who lives in Sanaa, tweeted, "Jesus I'm trying to find the least graphic picture to share and they're all bad. Saudi's impunity murdering Yemen civilians unprecedented." He labeled the attack a double-tap strike.

Al-Omeisy shared the following images, which were some of the least gory he could find:

In October, the U.S.-backed coalition bombed a funeral in Sanaa in another double-tap strike, killing more than 140 Yemenis and injuring at least 600. Human Rights Watch confirmed that a U.S.-made bomb was used in the attack, which also killed the mayor of Sanaa, and which the United Nations condemned as "outrageous" and an apparent war crime.

These funerals are just some of the many civilian areas bombed by the coalition, for which the U.S. has consistently provided weapons, intelligence and tens of millions of pounds of fuel. A study found that more than one-third of the thousands of coalition airstrikes have hit civilian sites, including hospitals, schools, civilian homes, refugee camps, and more.

The U.N. has repeatedly reported that the coalition is responsible for nearly two-thirds of civilian casualties.

The coalition, which is led by Saudi Arabia and supported and armed by the United States and United Kingdom, has brutally bombed Yemen since March 2015, in an attempt to beat back the Houthis and allied rebels loyal to former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh and reinstate the rule of close Saudi ally Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. Nearly two years of war have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Yemenis while plunging the country into one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.