Saudi-led airstrikes hit a crowded central market in al-Hazm, the capital of Yemen's northern al-Jawf province, around midday on Wednesday, killing 14 people, a spokesperson for the Houthi-run Health Ministry said, according to the Associated Press. The market, near a gas station, was packed with shoppers at the time, the spokesperson, Anees al-Asbahi, said in a post on X.

Source: Associated Press, via The Reflector

Al-Asbahi said three children and two women were among the 14 killed and that 15 other people were wounded. The Yemen Press Agency, reporting the Sanaa health authorities' account, said the strikes also hit adjacent houses and a fuel station and badly damaged nearby shops and homes. Both accounts come from authorities in Houthi-held Sanaa; the Associated Press reporting carried no immediate statement from Saudi Arabia or the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, and the market toll has not been independently verified.

Source: Yemen Press Agency

A preliminary toll that moved during the day

The figures changed as the day went on, which is common after strikes in areas with limited independent access. An earlier Houthi-run Health Ministry statement put the toll at 13 killed and 16 wounded; the updated account given by its spokesperson raised the deaths to 14 and put the wounded at 15, describing the toll as initial while search work continued. Readers should treat all of these numbers as the Houthi-run ministry's claims until an independent source can check them on the ground.

The Sanaa ministry called the targeting of a market, homes and a fuel station a war crime and a violation of international humanitarian law. That is the ministry's characterisation of the strike, not an independent finding; no international body had issued a finding on this specific strike in the reporting available on Wednesday.

Same-day appeal over besieged Taiz

In the same Associated Press report, officials of Yemen's internationally recognised government appealed for international help to protect civilians and reopen roads into Taiz, the southwestern city the Houthis have tightened their siege around in recent weeks. Taiz governor Nabil Shamsan said residents had lost access to about 3 million litres (about 793,000 gallons) of water previously available from wells in Wadi al-Dhubab, which he said is now under Houthi control — a claim the Associated Press said it could not independently verify.

Source: Associated Press, via The Reflector

Legal affairs minister Eshraq al-Maqtari said more than 2,000 projectiles and explosives fired by the Houthis had struck districts of Taiz city in recent days, and called for measures to cut off the group's weapons supplies and funding. Shamsan said fighting had intensified across the province, with reinforcements deployed to multiple fronts and the city encircled on all four sides. These are the government officials' accounts, attributed as such.

Why it matters beyond Yemen

Yemen's war, which began after the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, has repeatedly spilled into Gulf shipping, energy sites and air routes — the channels on which lakhs of Indian and Punjabi workers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf depend for jobs, flights home and remittances. Reuters reported on Wednesday that the renewed fighting has shattered the 2022 UN-brokered truce that had largely halted major attacks, and aid agencies warn conditions in a country already facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises are worsening fast.

Source: Reuters, via WIXX

What happens next: watch for any statement from Saudi Arabia or the Saudi-backed Yemeni government on the al-Hazm strike, and for any independent or UN verification of the toll. Awaaz Punjab will update this story if a second, independent account of the market strike emerges.