100 killed in air strike on Yemen prison: ICRC

SANAA: More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention centre in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday. The coalition said it targeted a facility run by the Huthi rebels that “stores drones and missiles”, but the rebels said the attack had levelled 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,” Rauchenstein 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 Sanaa. ICRC teams collecting bodies were “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. Saudi-led military coalition said t had launched air strikes on Houthi military targets in southwest Yemen that Houthi-run media said had hit a prison, killing dozens of people.

Residents told media there had been six air strikes and that a complex in the city being used as a detention center had been hit. The Houthi health ministry spokesman, in comments carried on the group’s Al Masirah TV, said 60 bodies had been pulled from rubble at the prison and that the number could rise. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the number of casualties.

“The explosions were strong and shook the city,” one resident said. “Afterwards ambulance sirens could be heard until dawn.”

The Western-backed alliance intervened in Yemen in March 2015 against the Houthis after they ousted the internationally recognized government from power in the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014.

The movement, which holds most major population centers in the Arabian peninsula nation, has stepped up cross-border missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia in recent months. The Saudi-led alliance has responded with strikes on Houthi targets.

The coalition, which has come under criticism by international rights groups for air strikes that have killed civilians, said it had taken measures to protect civilians in Dhamar and the assault complied with international law.

Al Masirah quoted the head of the Houthis’ national committee for prisoner affairs, Abdul Qader al-Mortada, as saying the detention center in Dhamar housed 170 prisoners.

The United Nations is trying to ease tension in Yemen to prepare for political negotiations to end the war that has killed tens of thousands and pushed the long-impoverished country to the brink of famine. The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis, who deny being puppets of Tehran, say they are fighting a corrupt system.