Saudi coalition kills eight, including child in Yemen airstrike

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen killed eight people when an airstrike hit a police building in the capital city Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi rebels say.

In a statement by their military media unit, the rebels said that a child was killed in the Sunday attack that badly damaged a department of records building and wounding some 58 people, in the Houthi-run capital.

Security officials and witnesses said many of the dead were civilians, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.

The United Nations has listed Yemen as the world's number one humanitarian crisis, with 60 per cent of the population - 17 million people - in need of food, seven million of whom are at risk of famine.

More than 9,200 people have been killed and millions displaced since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the Yemeni government's war against rebels in 2015.

A severe outbreak of cholera has left 2,000 dead and one million infected, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Yemen is today split in two, with the Houthi camp controlling the north and coalition-backed pro-government forces in the south.