100 killed in Yemen as airstrike hits Houthi ‘prison’

MORE than 100 people are believed to have been killed in an airstrike on a detention centre in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said yesterday.

The Saudi-led military coalition said it had targeted a facility run by Houthi rebels that “stores drones and missiles”, but the rebels claimed the attack had hit a building they used as a prison.

The ICRC rushed medical teams and hundreds of body bags to Dhamar, a south-western city.

“It’s a college building that has been empty and has been used as a detention facility for a while,” said Franz Rauchenstein, ICRC head of delegation for Yemen. “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.”

More than 100 people were estimated to have died, he said, and at least 40 survivors were being treated in hospitals in the city.

His team was “working relentlessly to find survivors under the rubble”, he said, but cautioned that the chances of bringing out anyone alive were slim.

Footage obtained by AFP showed heavy damage to the building and several bodies in the rubble, as bulldozers cleared away huge piles of debris.

The coalition intervened in 2015 to support Yemen’s government after the Houthis, who are aligned with Iran, seized Sana’a, the capital, and much of the country, which is the poorest in the Arab world.

The fighting has claimed tens of thousands of lives in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Both sides stand accused of actions that could amount to war crimes.