Twenty killed in air strike in southwest Yemen – residents

Adds coalition comment para 3)

DUBAI, April 20 (Reuters) – Twenty people were killed in an air strike by a Saudi-led military coalition in southwestern Yemen on Friday, residents said.

The attack hit a car transporting 20 passengers south of Taiz province, locals told Reuters. Six bodies had been identified but the rest were charred beyond recognition, they added.

A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said it would investigate the report, but declined to comment further. “We take this report very seriously,” he said.

The coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 against the Iran-aligned Houthis who ousted the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Houthis now control the capital Sanaa.

Coalition air strikes have repeatedly struck civilian targets while trying to target Houthi forces during the three-year war. The coalition says it does not target civilians.

Houthi fighters killed two people, including a woman, and wounded four others on Friday in an attack north of Taiz, residents and medical sources said.

The Yemen war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven the country to the verge of famine, according to the United Nations. (Writing by Ghaida Ghantous Editing by Andrew Heavens)