AKIPRESS.COM - Saudi-led airstrikes killed at least 80 people near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia and in the capital Sanaa Wednesday, residents said, the deadliest day of bombing in over two months of war in Yemen, reports Reuters.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized Sanaa last September and then thrust into central and south Yemen. Seeing the Houthi advance as a bridgehead for Iranian influence in the region, a Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes on March 26 in a campaign to restore Yemeni President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi to power.

Wednesday’s air raids on the Bakeel al-Meer area in Al-Hajjah province across Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen killed at least 40 people, most of them civilians, local inhabitants said.

Tribesmen aligned with the Houthis have been fighting Saudi ground forces in the area, and border clashes have escalated the conflict between the Shiite Muslim rebels and the coalition of Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states.

“Houthi gunmen were attacking Saudi border positions from this area but the coalition’s planes failed to hit the fighters and bombed civilians [instead],” a resident told Reuters by phone.Several hours later, airstrikes hit a special forces base allied with the Houthis in central Sanaa, the Houthi-run state news agency Saba said, in an account confirmed by residents.

“Around 40 people were martyred and more than 100 others were wounded, according to a preliminary toll, in bombing by the Saudi aggression’s planes on the Sabaaeen area in the capital Sanaa today,” the Saba dispatch said.