Yemen rescuers comb rubble as coalition slammed over prison attack
Yemeni rescue workers searched through rubble for survivors Sunday, two days after an attack on a prison killed scores of people, as an aid group said the Saudi-led coalition has “no way to deny” it hit the facility in an air strike.
Digging through the debris with their bare hands, the rescue teams combed the destroyed prison in Saada, with nearby hospitals already overwhelmed by more than 260 wounded, AFP reported.
They recovered five more bodies from the rubble of the prison facility, bringing the death toll to at least 87.
“Rescue operations are still ongoing,” International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Basheer Omar said, adding they were still looking for “missing and dead people”.
The Saudi-led coalition that has been waging a war on Yemen since 2015 has denied carrying out the attack, which coincided with another strike further south that knocked out the country’s internet. The network was still down on Sunday, a web monitor said.
The night-time attacks on Friday marked a dramatic escalation in the seven-year-old war, five days after the Yemeni Army said its drone-and-missile assault killed three people in the United Arab Emirates, a member of the coalition.
Witnesses in Yemen described hearing fighter jets and three loud explosions as the prison was hit.
“There is no way to deny that this is an air strike, everyone in Saada City heard it,” an unnamed member of aid group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said in a statement late on Saturday.
“I live one kilometer from the prison and my house was shaking from the explosions.”
“This is the latest in a long line of unjustifiable air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition on places like schools, hospitals, markets, wedding parties and prisons,” said Ahmed Mahat, MSF head of mission in Yemen.
“Since the beginning of the war we have frequently witnessed the terrible effects of indiscriminate coalition bombing on Yemen, including when our own hospitals have been attacked.”
Iran warned that Saudi-led air strikes made achieving peace more difficult.
United Nations Secretary-general Antonio Guterres condemned the attack, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for restraint on all sides.
The UAE had threatened reprisals after the Abu Dhabi assault last week.
After the Yemen prison attack, a spokesman for the Yemeni military issued a warning by telling foreign companies to leave the “unsafe” Persian Gulf country.
Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, remained without internet on Sunday, according to web monitor Netblocks, which said “the blackout continues to hinder human rights monitoring and independent media”.
MSF said its staff had confirmed the prison in Saada was destroyed and that a nearby hospital had run out of beds to treat the wounded.
“The hospital is facing a very difficult situation... with casualties lying on the floor,” a staff member was quoted as saying.
In other signs of the region’s soaring tensions, the UAE banned all drone flights for a month, without however linking the prohibition to the recent deadly attack.