Houthi aligned media in Yemen say at least 33 people were killed when air strikes hit al Shariyah, a town east of Sanaa, on Saturday. Officials named women and children among the dead and said 39 people were wounded.

Video from a television station run by the movement showed rescuers lifting bodies, including those of young children, from the ruins of several buildings, and injured people being carried to hospital on stretchers. A Houthi run news agency said Saudi Arabia carried out the raid. The Saudi led coalition that backs Yemen's internationally recognised government has not responded.

The figures mark a rise on earlier local counts from the same attack, which had put the death toll in the mid twenties. Hours before the bombs fell on al Shariyah, the coalition said it had intercepted a missile heading towards Riyadh. Mahdi al Mashat, who heads the Houthi political leadership, pledged that the movement would take revenge.

The wider war had been largely frozen for years before the conflict with Iran brought it back to life. A fragile pause began to collapse after Saudi forces struck Sanaa airport, which the Houthis control, to stop an Iranian aircraft from landing. The Houthis then attacked Abha airport inside Saudi Arabia and later targeted Saudi ships using the Red Sea as an alternative oil export route while the Strait of Hormuz remained disrupted.

Fighting between the Houthis and forces loyal to the Saudi backed government has since resumed in earnest. On Friday a market in Taiz province, one of the main battlegrounds of recent weeks, was hit in an attack said to have killed about 30 people. Each side blamed the other, the Houthis accusing Saudi aircraft and government forces saying a Houthi missile was responsible.

The United Nations says more than 1,600 people have been killed and more than 300,000 displaced since combat flared again.