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At least 16 shoppers and sellers were killed when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit Khokha market in Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeidah on Friday evening, a medic and security official said.

"Altogether 16 persons were confirmed killed and 10 others wounded," the medic in Hodeidah hospital told Xinhua. "They were all civilians."

The security official said the victims were shoppers and sellers, as many shops were completely burned up to the ground.

Inner City Press on March 10 asked UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft about the most recent bombing of Khokha, and if the Saudi-led Coalition shouldn't at least stop banning journalists from the UNHAS flights into Sana'a. Amb Rycroft replied,

The first issue the Security Council, from what I heard in our open session today, is united in the view that it’s only through a political solution that the conflict in Yemen will end. And that is why we all support the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed in his attempts to bring the parties into a meaningful political process which will end the war. That’s the UK view as well and we stand ready to do whatever we can to help Ismail in that process. It terms of journalists, I think that’s really a question for the UN or for the Saudi-led coalition, which the UK supports, but it’s a question that should be answered by them.

This is the latest in a series of airstrikes hitting Yemeni civilians since the war began in 2015.

Last month, the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemeni dominant Ansarullah forces killed at least 11 women in an airstrike on a funeral house north of the capital Sanaa.

Also last month, the Saudi-led airstrikes killed a family of six in the Red Sea coast city of Mokha in neighbouring province of Taiz.

The airstrikes have taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, says the Saudi campaign has claimed the lives of 10,000 Yemenis and left 40,000 others wounded.

On February 23, Yemen’s Legal Center for Rights and Development, an independent monitoring group, put the civilian death toll in the war-torn Arab country at 12,041.

The fatalities, it said, comprise 2,568 children and 1,870 women.

The video below was recorded live during the eruption of flames in the bombarded market.