An Arab air strike Saudi artillery shelling in northern Yemen killed 19 civilians and wounded dozens of others, Yemen's state news agency Saba reported late on Wednesday, as residents reported further air raids around the country on Thursday.
The report by Saba, which is controlled by Yemen's dominant Houthi movement, could not be independently confirmed.
Local
sources told the agency that Wednesday's air strike had killed 13
people. They also said six people had been killed when their car was
struck by a tank shell in a neighbouring district near the border with
Saudi Arabia.
A coalition of Arab states has been
bombing Houthi forces, the strongest faction in Yemen's civil war, part
of a campaign to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. The bombing began in March shortly after he fled to Saudi Arabia.
The
Houthis say they are part of a "revolution" against corruption. They
seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa last September and now control much of
the country.
Renewed Arab air strikes hit Houthi targets throughout the country on Thursday despite apparent progress toward peace talks.
Overnight
around 12 air raids hit weapons stores around the presidential palace
in the capital Sanaa, according to a Reuters witness, triggering
secondary blasts which lit up the night sky.
Residents
said Saudi shelling had hit the main border crossing from Saudi Arabia,
the world's top oil exporter, demolishing the customs department on the
Yemeni side of the facility in the far northern province of Haradh.
Air
strikes also hit a naval base and the office of Yemen's naval command
in the Western Red Sea port city of Hodaida, residents said.
The
United Nations is planning to convene peace talks between Yemen's
warring factions in Geneva on June 14, a date agreed to by the country's
exiled government but not yet supported by Houthi militia, diplomats
said on Wednesday.
The Houthis want a ceasefire as a precondition for talks.
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