If Hisham Abdulaziz had left al-Mazraq refugee camp in Yemen a few minutes later, he too would have been incinerated in the strike, just like the bodies he later saw at the hospital.
“They were burned, it was a very horrible image,” said the doctor after labouring to treat the wounded, including women and children, who streamed into the nearest hospital. By the end of the day there were 29 bodies in the hospital morgue. .
“One man came looking for his five children who were missing, and he was able to identify two of their corpses, but he couldn’t find the others,” said Abdulaziz, who spoke with the Guardian by telephone. “It was difficult to identify them.”
More than two dozen people in the camp were killed in the apparent air strike on Monday by the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Houthi rebels, believed to be backed by Iran.
The coalition battling the rebels is alarmed by the growing influence of Iran in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. But as the fighting intensifies, so does the humanitarian cost of the struggle, which is threatening to further push Yemen– already the poorest country in the Arab world – towards disaster.