Local Editor
More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention center in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday.
The coalition alleged it targeted a facility run by the Houthi revolutionaries that “stores drones and missiles,” but the Houthis said the attack had leveled a building they used as a prison.
The ICRC rushed to the scene in the city of Dhamar with medical teams and hundreds of body bags.
“The location that was hit has been visited by ICRC before,” Franz Rauchenstein, its head of delegation for Yemen, told AFP from Dhamar. “It’s a college building that has been empty and has been used as a detention facility for a while.”
“What is most disturbing is that (the attack was) on a prison. To hit such a building is shocking and saddening — prisoners are protected by international law.”
Rauchenstein said that over 100 people were estimated to be dead, and that at least 40 survivors were being treated for their injuries in hospitals in the city, south of the capital Sana'a.
ICRC teams collecting bodies were also “working relentlessly to find survivors under the rubble,” he said, but cautioned that the chances of finding any were very slim.
Footage obtained by AFP showed heavy damage to the building and several bodies lying in the rubble, as bulldozers worked to clear away huge piles of debris.
The coalition intervened in 2015 to forcefully reinstate the resigned regime of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Fighting since then has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and sparked what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The coalition stands accused of actions that could amount to war crimes and has been blacklisted by the U.N. for the killing of children.
Before the ICRC’s comments, the coalition had insisted the strike was conducted against “a military compound which was a legitimate military target.
Houthi television channel Al-Masirah said dozens had been killed and wounded in seven air strikes that hit the building.
“The enemy targeted prisoners on purpose in Dhamar, many of whom were preparing to be released under a prison swap deal,”
Houthi leader Sayyed Abdelmalek al-Houthi said in a televised speech on Sunday.
The attack in Dhamar comes weeks after a new front opened in Yemen’s complex war, pitting two of Riyadh’s allies against each other in a struggle for control of the south.
The United Arab Emirates, a key member of the coalition backing the resigned Hadi regime, has also trained and supported secessionists who seek an independent southern Yemen.
The southern forces last month seized control of the interim capital Aden in the south, in a see-sawing battle with government troops that has drawn warnings that the country could break apart entirely.
The resigened regime has accused the UAE of backing a “coup.
Analysts say the fight for the south is a key test for Saudi Arabia, which hopes to mediate a ceasefire so it can focus on its main mission of battling the Houthis who are aligned with its arch foe Iran.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
