Sanaa, Yemen (AFP) – Thousands of Yemenis demonstrated in the capital Sanaa on Sunday to vent anger at Riyadh, head of a coalition accused of carrying out air strikes that killed at least 140 people at a funeral.

The protesters gathered outside UN offices in Sanaa and chanted, “Death to Al-Saud,” the Saudi royal family.

The rally, dubbed the “Volcano of Rage”, came a day after bombs hit a funeral ceremony in the capital, in one of the deadliest air strikes since the Saudi-led coalition intervened against Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen in March 2015.

The attack also wounded more than 525 people, according to the United Nations.

“After this massacre, we are more determined to confront the assailants,” prominent rebel chief Mohammed Ali al-Huthi told the crowd. “Open the fronts with the Saudi enemy immediately.”

Demonstrators also chanted anti-US slogans coined in Shiite Iran, which backs Yemen’s rebels but denies providing military support.

“Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest). America is the Great Satan,” they shouted.

The coalition initially denied responsibility for Saturday’s strike but later said it was ready to investigate the “regrettable and painful” attack.

The Saudi-led coalition supports Yemen’s internationally-recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi against the rebels, who seized the capital and swathes of Yemeni territory in 2014.

The UN says the conflict has killed more than 6,600 people – almost two-thirds of them civilians – and displaced at least three million since the Saudi-led intervention.

The coalition has faced repeated criticism from rights groups over civilian casualties in its campaign in Yemen.

Yesterday Yemen’s rebel-allied former president Ali Abdullah Saleh called for mobilisation along the border with Saudi Arabia to avenge deadly air strikes on the funeral blamed on a Saudi-led coalition.

“I call upon all members of the armed forces, security and popular committees (militia)… to head to the front, to the borders, to take revenge,” he said in a televised address.

Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 following nationwide protests and a Saudi-sponsored peace initiative, commands troops that have defected and sided with Iran-backed Shiite rebels, who overran the Yemeni capital in September 2014.

“We should avenge our casualties… those killed in army bases as well as in markets, including heinous massacres, and the greatest of those is the massacre of the (funeral) hall,” which was struck on Saturday.