11 killed in airstrike at wedding party in Yemen
Sanaa, July 4 : An airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition hit a wedding party in Yemen's northern province of Saada on Tuesday, Killing 11 civilians and wounding 11 others, a local security official said.
The airstrike targeted the wedding ceremony in Ghafirah village of al-Thahir district, the official said, speaking to Xinhua by phone on condition of anonymity. He said most of the victims were women and children.
There is no independent confirmation of the alleged airstrike and the civilian casualties, while the Saudi-led coalition has not commented on it.
The coalition always denies targeting civilians, insisting that its airstrikes only aim at the rebels' hideouts. Saada is the key stronghold of the Iranian-allied Shiite Houthi rebels fighting the Saudi-led coalition forces.
If confirmed, the Tuesday's attack was the latest in a series of airstrikes that resulted in the deaths of civilians in Yemen.
On Monday, a coalition airstrike hit near a school in Zabid district in Yemen's western Red Sea port city of Hodeidah province, Killing three residents and injuring four others, according to official reports by both warring forces.
The impoverished Arab country has been locked in a civil war since the Houthi rebels overran much of Yemen militarily and seized all northern provinces in 2014, including the capital Sanaa.
Saudi Arabia leads an Arab military coalition that has intervened in the Yemen war since 2015 to support the government of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
More than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, have been killed in the war, and about 3 million others have been displaced.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
