Deadly school bus airstrike haunts Yemenis 1 year later
Younis Qatabri was severely injured in the school bus bombing in August 2018 in Yemen, and a year later he remains in pain and cannot walk unaided.
SAADA, Yemen — Aug. 9 marks exactly one year since an airstrike killed dozens of children on a school bus in Yemen’s Saada province. Though survivor Younis Qatabri doesn't remember much from that day, he grieves each time he thinks of his friends who died in the bombing.
“Sometimes I do remember them and I often cry,” Qatabri, 14, told Al-Monitor in a recent interview.
“Those whose death hit me the most were [brothers] Osama and Ali Zaid al-Homran,” he said, referring to his classmates who were on a field trip marking their graduation from summer school.
Osama Homran was the schoolboy who took a video of his classmates playing and yelling on the packed school bus before it was hit by a Saudi-led coalition airstrike.
