Red Cross says employee gunned down in Yemen

GENEVA/ADE — The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Saturday one of its employees had been killed in a shooting in the Yemeni city of Taiz, one day after a Saudi-led coalition air strike killed twenty people in Taiz province, according to residents. 

Yemeni officials and the ICRC named the man as Hanna Lahoud, a Lebanese national, who was killed in Taiz in southwestern Yemen by unknown gunmen who opened fire on a car. 

Lahoud was in charge of the ICRC's detention programme in Yemen, the ICRC said in a statement. He was on his way to visit a prison this morning when he was attacked on the outskirts of Taiz, the statement said. He was taken to the hospital and died from his injuries. 

Friday’s air strike hit a car transporting 20 passengers south of Taiz province, locals told Reuters. Six bodies had been identified but the rest were charred beyond recognition, they added.

A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said it would investigate the report, but declined to comment further. "We take this report very seriously," he said.

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015, backing government forces fighting Iran-allied Houthi rebels.

Coalition air strikes have repeatedly struck civilians while trying to target Houthi forces during the three-year war. The coalition says it does not target civilians.

Also on Friday. Houthi fighters killed two people, including a woman, and wounded four others in an attack north of Taiz, residents and medical sources said.

The Yemen war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven the country to the verge of famine, according to the United Nations.