Fighter jets bomb checkpoint near Sanaa, causing a car with five victims to careen into a petrol station and explode.

An air raid on a checkpoint of the Houthis outside the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, has killed at least five civilians in a taxi and two armed personnel manning the site, witnesses say.

The Reuters news agency said Wednesday’s bombing in the Masajed district, about 10km west of Sanaa, caused the car to veer into a nearby petrol station, setting it ablaze and complicating rescue efforts, they said.

A Saudi-led military coalition has launched thousands of air raids against the armed Houthi group which controls Sanaa and much of Yemen’s north.

The coalition intervened in a civil war in March 2015 to restore to power Yemen‘s overthrown internationally recognised government.

The coalition made no immediate comment on the reported air attack.

The war, which began in 2015, has killed at least 10,000 people and unleashed hunger and disease in the country that even before the conflict was one of the Arab world’s poorest.

On Saturday, the coalition took responsibility for an air raid a day earlier, in which at least 14 people – including children, were killed, blaming “a technical mistake”.