Yemen: Saudi-led airstrike on rebel-run prison kills at least 70
A Saudi-led airstrike on a prison run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has killed at least 70 detainees and wounded scores more, with the death toll expected to rise, in a dramatic escalation of the country’s long-running conflict.
Houthi rebels released gruesome video footage on Friday showing bodies in the rubble and mangled corpses from the prison attack, which levelled buildings at the jail in their northern heartland of Saada. Aid workers said hospitals were overwhelmed after the prison attack, with one receiving 200 wounded, according to Doctors Without Borders.
Taha al-Motawakel, health minister in the Houthi government, which controls the country’s north, said that 70 detainees were killed at the prison but that he expects the number to rise since many of the wounded were seriously hurt. Farther south in the port town of Hodeida, three children died when airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition hit a telecommunications facility as they played nearby, Save the Children said.
“The children were reportedly playing on a nearby football field when missiles struck,” Save the Children said. There was also a country-wide internet blackout.
The attacks come five days after the Houthis took the seven-year war into a new phase by claiming a drone-and-missile attack on Abu Dhabi that killed three people.
The United Nations security council is due to meet on Friday in an emergency session on the Houthi attacks against the UAE, at the request of the Gulf state, which has occupied one of the non-permanent seats on the council since 1 January.
The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting the rebels since 2015, in an intractable conflict that has displaced millions of Yemenis and left them on the brink of famine.
Saudi Arabia’s state news agency said the coalition carried out “precision airstrikes … to destroy the capabilities of the Houthi militia in Hodeida”.
Yemen’s civil war has been a catastrophe for millions of its citizens who have fled their homes, with many close to famine in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The UN has estimated the war killed 377,000 people by the end of 2021, both directly and indirectly through hunger and disease.
Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/21/airstrike-yemen-prison-leaves-many-dead-or-wounded
AP Article:
https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-middle-east-sanaa-dubai-cfad87600e2c93ab9af22dc80ba27875
AP Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1484412769659240450
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Yemen is a humanitarian disaster right now. How does Saudi Arabia conduct "precision airstrikes" and hit a fucking prison?
To boot, the internet is knocked out, so it will be very difficult from here on out to verify reporting… convenient for the war criminals.