Yemeni scholars and religious figures have strongly denounced a recent deadly airstrike by Saudi warplanes on a bus carrying schoolchildren in the country’s northwestern province of Sa’ada, criticizing the silence and inaction of world bodies vis-à-vis the Saudi-led coalition's crimes against Yemenis.

The scholars, in a statement released on Sunday, held the United Nations and the UN Security Council responsible for the atrocities of the Saudi-led military alliance against the Yemeni nation.

The statement called on all freedom-loving people worldwide, Muslim leaders and clerics in particular, to raise their voices and fulfill their humanitarian and religious duties in the face of the aggressors’ heinous criminal acts.

It also urged Yemeni people to stand united, demonstrate resilience and continue to send fighters to battlefronts.

The airstrike on August 9 hit a bus carrying a group of young schoolchildren attending summer classes of the Holy Qur’an from a camp at a busy market area in the Dhahyan district of Sa’ada province, UN spokesman, Farhan Haq, said in a statement.

According to Yemeni medical sources, over 50 people, including 40 children, were killed and 77 injured in the strike.

Mourners bury people, mainly children, killed in a Saudi airstrike on a bus in northern Yemen, in Sa’ada, Yemen, on August 13, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has censured the attack, calling for “an independent and prompt investigation” into the incident.

Some 15,000 Yemenis have been killed and thousands more injured since the onset of the Saudi-led aggression on Yemen in March 2015.

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

People walk past a house destroyed by a Saudi airstrike in the old quarter of Sana’a, Yemen, on August 8, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

A high-ranking UN aid official has warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

“The conflict has escalated since November, driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.