Thirty feared dead in blaze at Yemeni migration centre

AS MANY as 30 people are feared dead after a fire ripped through a migration centre in Yemen, the UN has said.

The International Organisation for Migration, a UN agency, said it had confirmed eight deaths in the immediate aftermath of the blaze at the centre in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire at the facility, which was holding hundreds of mostly Ethiopian migrants, but Saudi jets were reported to have carried out airstrikes nearby at around the same time.

“Eight people confirmed dead, the total death toll is reported to be much higher,” Carmela Godeau, IOM’S regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, wrote on Twitter.

“IOM is responding particularly with emergency health care for over 170 injured, more than 90 of them are in a serious condition,” she wrote.

Sunday’s airstrikes came in response to Houthi drone and missile attacks inside Saudi Arabia on an oil storage yard at Ras Tanura and a residential compound in Dhahran used by Saudi Aramco. There were no casualties.