Several warplanes attacked a checkpoint outside the Yemeni capital, Sanaa killing five civilians in a taxi and two armed personnel manning the site, witnesses said.

The bombing in the Masajed district about 10 km (six miles) west of Sanaa caused the car to careen into a nearby gas station, setting it ablaze and complicating rescue efforts, they said.

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

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

The war 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.