A Yemeni coastguard lamented the lack of "respect for humanity" as the bodies of 31 Somali refugees killed in a helicopter attack were brought ashore on Friday (March 17).
Mohamed al-Alay, a coastguard in the Hodeidah area on the Red Sea, told Reuters the refugees, who were carrying official UNHCR documents, were on their way from Yemen to Sudan on Thursday (March 16) when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab al-Mandeb strait. It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack.
Hodeidah is controlled by fighters from the Iranian-allied Houthi militia, which overran Yemen's capital Sanaa in 2014 and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab alllies have carried out thousands of bombing raids in Yemen since March 2015 in a campaign to try to restore Hadi's ousted administration
