Saudi-led airstrike kills 21 in attack on crowded market in Yemen

Military coalition targets Houthi rebels in assault on Sahar in Saadah province

People gather at the site of an airstrike in the north western city of Saada, Yemen (Naif Rahma/Reuters)

An airstrike by a Saudi-led military coalition has killed 21 people at a market in Yemen's northern Saadah province, according to a Reuters witness at the scene.

The attack that struck the Sahar district of the vast territory, on the border with Saudi Arabia, reduced the site to a heap of twisted sheet metal. Medics gathered corpses and laid them in a group.

A military alliance led by Saudi Arabia has launched thousands of airstrikes against Yemen's armed Houthi movement, which hails from Saadah and now controls much of the country.

The two-and-a-half-year war effort has yet to achieve its goal of restoring to power the internationally recognised government, but the conflict has unleashed one of the world's worst humanitarian crises and killed at least 10,000 people.

Reuters