An airstrike targeting a prison in the town of Saada, a Houthi rebel stronghold in northern Yemen, killed more than 100 on Friday (January 21st), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. The attack was not immediately claimed. An act ” awful”, according to the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
” There are more than 100 dead and injured, and it is growing,” said Bashir Omar, ICRC spokesman in Yemen, citing the hospital toll. The Houthis had announced the attack on their television channel, Al-Massirah, earlier on Friday, and released footage showing buildings blown up with rescue teams pulling bodies from the rubble, some mutilated.
“From what I heard from colleagues in Saada, there are many bodies at the site of the strike, and many missing. It is impossible to know how many people were killed”, said Ahmed Mahat, head of the mission of Doctors Without Borders in Yemen. The city hospital had received some 200 wounded and then said it could not accommodate any more.
Nationwide internet outage
Meanwhile, the Saudi-led military coalition’s response to the deadly attack on the United Arab Emirates claimed by Iran-backed Houthi rebels continues. Overnight Thursday-Friday, the coalition bombed the Houthi-controlled Red Sea town of Hodeidah, destroying a telecommunications center and causing an internet blackout across the country, the report said. NetBlocks organization, a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in monitoring the Internet around the world.
The Applied Internet Data Analysis Center and CloudFlare, based in San Diego and San Francisco, California, respectively, also found a nationwide outage affecting Yemen from the same time. NetBlocks reported a “collapse of internet connections in the country” after the bombings. Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondents in Hodeïda and Sanaa confirmed the breakdown.
The pro-government coalition, which fights Houthi rebels, said it was aiming for a “hub of piracy and organized crime” in this vital port city for the country at war. The Saudi state news agency said the coalition had carried out “targeted airstrikes to destroy Houthi militia’s ability to act in Hodeidah”.
Victims also in Hodeïda, according to the Houthis
Most of the humanitarian aid destined for Yemen transits through Hodeidah, a vital stake in the war in Yemen. The Houthis reported casualties in the strike, but their statement could not immediately be confirmed. An AFP correspondent in Hodeida described a large-scale attack.
This comes after the Houthi rebels hijacked a ship flying the flag of the United Arab Emirates in the Red Sea: the coalition had, in fact, warned that it would bombard in retaliation the ports held by the rebels.
On Monday, rebels claimed responsibility for a drone and missile attack that hit oil installations and the airport in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, killing three people and injuring six. The Emirates are members of the Saudi-led coalition. According to the United Nations, the conflict in Yemen has claimed 377,000 lives, direct and indirect victims of a war that has lasted for more than seven years.
