Saudi Coalition Airstrikes Kill 11 Yemeni Girls

Originally appeared on The American Conservative.

Saudi coalition planes bombed the area next to a girls’ school in Sanaa earlier today, killing at least 11 and injuring dozens more:

At least eleven schoolgirls have been killed by an explosion at a warehouse in Yemen, medical officials say.

A total of 54 people in Sanaa have been wounded with eleven children in nearby schools pronounced dead after a metal workshop exploded.

Yemeni journalists and activists were the first to report on the attack:

The latest coalition attack hit a residential area. That is consistent with the coalition’s frequent attacks on civilian targets, which have consistently made up one third of their airstrikes over the last four years of war. Like many other coalition airstrikes, the jets bombed the area once and then struck it again with a second attack. Attacks on schools have unfortunately been all too common in this war. 2,500 schools in Yemen have been damaged or destroyed over the last four years. Millions Yemeni children already must cope with malnutrition and the threat of disease, and even at their schools they are not safe from being killed by coalition airstrikes. In addition to the children killed and wounded in such attacks, all Yemeni children have been traumatized by the ongoing conflict. Both the mental and physical health of an entire generation of Yemenis is being severely harmed by the effects of this war. The Trump administration continues to back the Saudi coalition as they bomb hospitals and kill schoolchildren. This is what supporters of U.S. involvement in the war are defending.

Update: The death toll has reportedly risen to 13, and as many as 90 people, most of them children, have been injured in the blast.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter. This article is reprinted from The American Conservative with permission.