Dubai: Air strikes by a military coalition killed at least 20 people attending a wedding in a village in northwestern Yemen late on Sunday, residents and medical sources said.
The head of Al Jumhouri hospital in Hajjah said that the hospital had received 40 bodies, most of them torn to pieces, and that 46 people had been injured, including 30 children, in air strikes that hit a wedding gathering.
Residents and medics said that 20 people attending the celebration were killed and at least 30 injured.
"We take this report very seriously and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are," a spokesman for the coalition said.
The Western-backed alliance has been fighting a war for three years against the armed Houthi movement which controls the area and much of northern Yemen.
It has launched thousands of air strikes in a campaign to restore the internationally recognised government. Errant strikes have killed hundreds of civilians at hospitals, schools and markets.
Al Masirah, the TV station of the Houthi rebels which controls the area and much of northern Yemen, said on its Twitter account that 33 people had been killed and 55 wounded.
Meanwhile, pro-government soldiers and jihadists clashed Monday in Yemen's southern city of Taez following the killing of an aid worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross, police said.
Fighting in the city's Jahmaliah district came after the governor of Taez launched an operation against jihadists that he suspected were behind the murder of the ICRC employee over the weekend.
Jahmaliah is controlled by pro-government forces but there is a jihadist presence in the area, a police officer said.
A large portion of Taez, Yemen's third-largest city, is held by pro-government fighters but the entrances to the city are controlled by Houthi rebels.
Fierce clashes broke out after the operation was launched on Monday morning, according to the officer, who was unable to provide further details.
On Sunday, Taez governor Amin Ahmad Mahmud, loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, created a special force of police and army units tasked with launching an operation against jihadists he believes killed the ICRC employee on Saturday.
The Lebanese aid worker, Hanna Lahoud, was shot in Taez by unidentified assailants.