Ten year-old Naziha Ghaleb lay wounded in a hospital bed on Sunday after an air strike hit her family’s home in Hodeidah, killing four of her sisters, while fighting in the port city intensified.
The deputy director of al-Thawra hospital, where Naziha Ghaleb is being treated, said that most of the hospital’s staff and able-bodied patients fled the hospital out of fear of the ongoing fighting in the area.
An air strike hit the Ghaleb family’s house in Hodeidah on Friday, Nazhia’s father Maged Ghaleb said, killing three of his daughters on impact. One more died on the way to the hospital, while Naziha remains unconscious in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) suffering from a torn intestine.
Intense fighting broke out in Yemen‘s port city of Hodeidah late on Monday, shattering a lull in violence that had raised hopes of a ceasefire between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi insurgents as the United Nations tried to resume peace talks.
Coalition warplanes conducted more than 10 air strikes on Houthi positions and battles could be heard in the “July 7” district, four km away from the port, residents said. One resident said a medium-range missile had been fired from the city centre towards the district in the suburbs.
The coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had last week ordered a halt in its offensive against the Houthi-held Red Sea port city, now a focus of the war, amid pressure from the West to end a conflict that has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine.
The two countries also pledged on Tuesday a new $500 million food aid programme for Yemen, aiming to reach 10 to 12 million people.