'It was a massacre'

At least 55 people, including women and children, have been killed in Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeidah in air raids carried out by a Saudi and UAE alliance battling Houthi rebels,  the rebel-run health ministry said.

In a statement issued late on Thursday, the ministry said the attacks, which targeted the city's Public al-Thawra Hospital and a busy fishing port, wounded at least 124 Yemenis.

The Reuters news agency put the death toll at 28 late on Thursday, while China's Xinhua said it stood at 70 early yesterday.

Taha al-Mutawakil, the Minister for Public Health and Population in the Houthi-led administration, said local authorities were struggling to cope with the number of casualties, and ambulances feared transporting the wounded to Sanaa or other provinces due to fears of being targeted by air attacks.

"What we have seen in Hodeidah is a heinous crime," Mutawakil was quoted by the Houthi-run SABA news agency saying. He added that US shared responsibility for the deaths.

Mohamed al-Hasni, the head of Hodeidah's fishermen union, told Al Jazeera that there were no military targets in the area and "the targeting of fishermen was not expected".

"The port and market were full of people. It was a massacre," he said.

A senior UN official expressed alarm yesterday at the deadly strikes in Hodeida. "This is shocking," said Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, reported AFP.

UN envoy Martin Griffiths told the Security Council on Thursday that the United Nations will invite the warring sides for talks on September 6 in Geneva on a framework for peace negotiations.