The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dozens killed in missile strike
Factory hit during Saudi-led attacks on Yemen’s rebels.
SANAA, YEMEN — Saudiled coalition warplanes bombed Shiite rebel positions Wednesday across Yemen as a missile strike on a dairy factory killed 35 workers, authorities said.
Wednesday’s strikes marked a week of airstrikes by the Saudi-led campaign, which aims to weaken the Shiite rebels known as Houthis and forces allied with them, largely fighters loyal to Yemen’s deposed leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Since their advance began last year, the Houthis have overrun Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and several provinces, forcing President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee the country.
Wednesday’s airstrikes targeted rebel-controlled army camps in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida. Anti-aircraft guns there returned fire and amid the fighting, missiles hit warehouses belonging to a factory that makes dairy products.
Parts of the dairy’s main building collapsed with workers still inside, five eyewitnesses and officials said. At least 35 workers died in the collapse, many of them crushed or burned alive, according to the medical center in Hodeida.
Each side blamed the other.
Ahmed Asiri, the coalition spokesman, denied his warplanes caused the factory collapse. He said Houthi rebels and allied fighters launched missiles at civilians out “of desperation from realizing results on the ground and because they have become now isolated inside cities.”
“They have targeted the dairy factory. The information we got from the ground is that mortars and ... rockets hit the factory and caused the deaths,” Asiri said.
Two Yemeni military officials loyal to Hadi said the factory had been used as a rebel weapons cache, and that while the airstrikes flattened the warehouses, the main factory building was only partially damaged — suggesting it might have been hit from ground.
A Houthi spokesman, Mohammed Abdul Salam, later said that the coalition only struck civilians in its attacks, without elaborating.
The factory deaths came a day after international aid groups expressed alarm over high civilian casualties in Yemen’s escalating crisis. In Tehran, dozens of Yemeni expatriates, including clerics and students, took to the streets on Wednesday to denounce the air- strikes. The protesters burned photos of Saudi King Salman and marched outside the Saudi Embassy.
A report Tuesday by the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said 62 children were killed and 30 wounded during the fighting in Yemen over the past week. It was not clear if the deaths were the result of airstrikes or ongoing clashes between rival groups across the country.
Also Tuesday, the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said its staffers in Yemen confirmed that at least 19 civilians died when airstrikes hit a refugee camp near the Houthi stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen on Sunday, with at least 35 wounded, including 11 children.
Asiri called on aid agencies to coordinate with the coalition and concerned authorities to ensure access to areas.
“The circumstances on the ground now necessitate that we find the appropriate environment for aid agencies to be present on the ground” and to ensure that the aid reaches the needy, he said.
Critics of the Houthis charge that they are an Iranian proxy — a claim the rebels deny. Iran has provided aid to the rebels, but both Tehran and the Houthis reject accusations that it has armed them.