Airstrikes kill dozens at rebel security facility in Yemen

Three attacks targeted area, destroying detention centres, according to security official

SANAA, YEMEN— Dozens of people, including prisoners, were killed after airstrikes by a Saudi-led military coalition struck a security facility in western Yemen, local security officials and news reports said Sunday.

The airstrikes, late Saturday evening, hit a security complex, which included detention facilities, in the port city of Al Hudaydah on Yemen’s Red Sea coast. The area is controlled by Houthi rebels who hold much of the country’s north and west.

A security official in Al Hudaydah said three strikes had targeted the compound after sunset Saturday, de- stroying two detention centres that held men jailed by local security services, which the Houthis oversee.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media, the official said 48 people had been killed, most of them prisoners.

Saba, a Houthi-controlled news agency, said the strikes killed 60 people and wounded dozens. Al-Maseera, the Houthis’ satellite news channel, broadcast images of bodies covered in blankets and plastic sheeting.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, a spokesperson for the Saudi-led military coalition, confirmed in a statement that coalition jets had targeted a security building in Al Hudaydah, which he said the Houthis had used as “a command and control centre for their military operations.”

When asked about the time dis- crepancy, al-Asiri insisted the attack had taken place at dawn Sunday, even though Yemeni outlets reported it Saturday night.

Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been embroiled in conflict since the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and other cities in 2014. They later sent the government into exile in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states began bombing the Houthis to try to degrade their forces and restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

The war has killed more than 10,000 people, many of them civilians, and the United Nations has estimated that bombings by the Saudiled coalition are responsible for most civilian deaths.

Human rights groups say that the Houthis have indiscriminately tar- geted residential neighbourhoods.

The strikes in Al Hudaydah came hours after at least18 people, some of them children, were killed in coalition airstrikes in the western city of Taiz, according to the Associated Press.

International efforts to find a political solution to the war are at an impasse. Hadi on Saturday rejected the latest peace plan proposed by the United Nations.

The plan, a copy of which was obtained by the New York Times, would gradually sideline Hadi while granting the Houthis a role in a future government in exchange for their withdrawal from major cities.

In a statement from his office, Hadi rejected the proposal, saying it would legitimize the Houthis’ “coup” and calling it “a gateway to more suffering and war.”