News - Yemen: December 20 stands as a painful date in Yemen’s collective memory, marked by a series of deadly airstrikes carried out by the US-Saudi aggression that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure across several governorates, according to local accounts and eyewitness testimonies.

On this day in 2015, coalition warplanes launched an airstrike on a civilian home in Kataf district, Sa’adah governorate, killing five women. Witnesses said the aircraft carried out three consecutive strikes on inhabited houses, reducing them to rubble. One resident recalled that the home collapsed on its occupants “without any justification,” leaving women’s bodies torn apart by the bombardment.

Escalation in 2017:

The violence escalated on December 20, 2017, with airstrikes hitting both residential areas and economic facilities. Coalition aircraft struck warehouses belonging to the Al-Sawari Plastics Factory in Bani Matar district, a civilian facility producing shoes, plastic sheets, and water containers. Workers and residents stressed that the factory had no military purpose, describing the attack as a direct assault on civilians’ livelihoods.

On the same day, airstrikes hit the Bab Najran area, where warplanes bombed a civilian home and a vehicle with four strikes, killing 12 people and injuring eight others—most of them women and children. A surviving medic said the first strike hit the house, and as rescuers attempted to evacuate women and children into a vehicle, a second strike targeted the car and paramedics. “I shrouded a two-year-old child with my own hands,” a witness said, adding that schoolchildren returning home in uniform were among the victims.

Further strikes on December 20, 2017, targeted homes in Al-Sawad area of Sanhan district, Sana’a governorate, killing one civilian and injuring four others. A victim’s son said the first missile hit at 2:30 a.m., and as more than 20 family members tried to take shelter in the basement, a second missile destroyed the house, killing his father and injuring the rest of the family.

In Sana’a’s Al-Thawra district, coalition airstrikes also hit commercial hangars, a mosque, and Al-Zahraa Girls’ School, causing total destruction and widespread fear among women and students. A worshipper at the damaged mosque questioned why “a house of worship and warehouses used to distribute aid to the poor” were targeted.

Attacks on Infrastructure (2018–2019):

In subsequent years, December 20 saw attacks extend beyond homes to vital infrastructure. In Sa’adah, solar power systems on farms in Razih district were destroyed. In 2018, artillery shelling hit the Al-Rafahia Hotel in Hodeidah, targeting civilian tourism facilities. In 2019, heavy mortar fire set ablaze farms in Al-Jah area of Al-Tuhayta district, destroying homes and agricultural land.

That same year, airstrikes targeted Sana’a International Airport, hitting the Civil Aviation Institute and customs warehouses in four separate raids, destroying medicines and humanitarian supplies belonging to the United Nations, as well as travelers’ belongings.

Local testimonies and documented incidents linked to December 20 over multiple years point to what Yemeni sources describe as a sustained pattern of coalition attacks on civilians, their homes, workplaces, farms. These incidents, they argue, constitute crimes against humanity that do not expire with time.

Despite the scale of destruction and loss, residents and witnesses say such attacks have only reinforced the resolve of the Yemeni people, who continue to voice steadfastness in the face of what they describe as an ongoing campaign that has spared neither children nor the elderly.