At least 70 detainees were killed in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a detention center in Yemen, run by the Houthi rebels, on Friday. Dozens of detainees were injured, a rebel minister said.
The massacre took place in Saada, a stronghold of the Houthi rebel movement. Taha al-Motawakel, health minister of the Houthi government that controls the north of the country, told AP news agency in the capital Sanaa that 70 inmates were killed but he expects the number to rise in the coming hours as many are injured there. to be serious.
Hours after the airstrike, rescuers were still trying to retrieve bodies from the rubble. Hopes of finding survivors faded, says BBC Middle East correspondent Anna Foster. Houthi-run television showed men clearing debris with their hands and injured people at a local hospital. According to Doctors Without Borders (AzG), more than two hundred people have already been injured in one hospital. “From what I hear from my colleague in Saada, many bodies are still at the site of the airstrike and many are missing,” said Ahmed Mahat, head of the MSF mission in Yemen. “It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It appears to have been a horrific act of violence.”
The organization Save the Children said earlier that more than 60 people were killed in Saada and that it is a prison with detained migrants. “Those seeking a better life for themselves and their families, Yemeni civilians injured by the dozen is an image we never expected to wake up to in Yemen,” said Gillian Moyes, director of the international development organization in Yemen. .
The Saudi-led coalition has not confirmed the airstrike on the detention center. She regularly hit civilian sites during the eight-year war. It is unclear whether the detention center was the intended target.
Telecommunications Center
Earlier Friday, a Saudi airstrike in the port city of Hodeida – later confirmed by satellite photos analyzed by AP news agency – hit a telecommunications center that is key to Yemen’s internet connection. Airstrikes also hit targets near Sanaa, which has been held by the Houthis since late 2014. According to Save the Children At least three children were killed playing on a football field in the former airstrike. Satellite photos analyzed by the news agency matched photos shared on social media of the destroyed telecommunications building.
The Saudi-led coalition acknowledged that it was conducting “accurate air strikes to destroy the militia’s capabilities” around the port of Hodeida. It did not immediately confirm that a telecommunications target had been hit, as NetBlocks described, but called Hodeida “a center for piracy and Iranian arms smuggling to support the Houthis.”
The air offensive comes after the Iranian-backed Houthis claim to be behind the drone and missile strike earlier this week on Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It marked a major escalation of the civil war in Yemen, where the Saudi Arabia-led coalition backed by the UAE has been fighting the rebels since 2015.
Iran denies arming the Houthis, although UN experts, independent analysts and Western countries point to evidence showing Tehran’s link to the weapons.
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