In the fifth day of a 10-nation, Saudi-led airstrike campaign against Shiite rebels in Yemen, warplanes screamed over the capital Sanaa in strikes that began Sunday night and continued through Monday morning, witnesses told Reuters.
According to the news agency, residents said the strikes appeared to be targeting the diplomatic quarter of the capital, previous strikes have attacked the opposition group's weapons sites.
The Shiite militia group, who are also known as the Houthis and are allied with Iran, have staged an armed uprising against Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, steadily tightening their control since an initial seige on the capital last September. Yemen has been plummeting toward civil war since then, with the Houthis driving Hadi out of his Aden palace last week, where he had temporarily set up government operations, and Saudi launching airstrikes against the group almost a week ago.
UN officials and world leaders have warned the Gulf country's deepening crisis could lead to a proxy war between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran, who has harshly criticized the airstrike coalition as foreign aggression by Saudi.
