by Our Foreign Desk

SAUDI ARABIA announced the start of a five-day “humanitarian pause” in its brutal bombardment of Yemen yesterday.

The unexpected cessation of hostilities was down to a request from exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to King Salman, Saudi state media said.

But it followed the war’s deadliest bombing raid yet after at least 120 civilians were killed when warplanes swooped on a complex of housing for workers at a power plant in Mokha on Friday night.

Eyewitness Wahib Mohammed said the sudden blitz on the sleepy seaside town has “ripped bodies apart” and had also hit nearby livestock pens, so that human and animal blood mixed as it flowed through the streets.

Saudi Arabia is waging war on the Houthi rebels and loyalists of former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh on behalf of Mr Hadi — but Yemeni officials said the closest Houthi outpost was at least three miles from Mokha.

Doctors Without Borders spokesman Hassan Boucenine said the murderous raid “shows the trend of air strikes from the coalition — now it’s a house, it’s a market, it’s anything.”

Casualties were higher because many workers had relatives visiting for the Eid-al-Fitr holiday, Mr Boucenine said.