At least 70 people were killed and around 100 injured on Friday (January 21st) in an airstrike against a rebel-held prison in Yemen, an attack attributed to the Saudi-led coalition and showing a sharp escalation in violence.
Thursday evening, this military coalition intervening since 2015 in Yemen, a country at war, claimed responsibility for a raid against the city of Hodeïda (west).
It claimed the lives of three children according to an NGO.
Saudi Arabia leads the coalition made up of Muslim countries including the United Arab Emirates, which supports Yemeni government forces in the face of Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
In the middle of the night, an aerial bombardment hit a prison in Saada, the Houthi stronghold in the north.
At least 70 people were killed and 138 injured, according to the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which denounced a "horrible" attack.
This assessment concerns only one hospital in Saada, "two other establishments having received many injuries".
"Searching continues in the rubble," added MSF.
"Blatant indifference" to the lives of civilians
It was not immediately possible to know who the detainees were, nor how many there were.
But eight NGOs including Action Against Hunger, Oxfam and Save the Children, said in a joint statement that among the dead would be migrants.
Saying they were "horrified", these NGOs denounced a "flagrant indifference" for the lives of civilians.
The Saada attack has not been claimed but the Houthis have accused the coalition, which controls Yemen's airspace, of perpetrating a "crime" in Saada.
The rebels released a video showing macabre scenes presented as the consequences of the strike: destroyed buildings, rescuers extricating bodies from the rubble and mutilated corpses.
"From what I heard from colleagues in Saada, there are many bodies and many missing," said Ahmed Mahat, MSF's head of mission in Yemen.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned in a statement "the coalition airstrikes.
“Other airstrikes have been reported elsewhere in Yemen, with civilian deaths and injuries, including children,” he also denounced, calling for “rapid, effective and transparent investigations” into these attacks. events to hold their perpetrators to account.
"Proportionate response"
On Thursday night, the coalition targeted the Houthi-held port city of Hodeidah.
At least three children were killed, according to Save the Children.
"They were apparently playing on a nearby football pitch when the missiles hit."
The coalition said it targeted Hodeidah as a "hub of piracy and organized crime".
After the raid, the organization NetBlocks, which specializes in monitoring the internet around the world, reported a "collapse of internet connections in the country".
AFP correspondents in Hodeïda and Sanaa confirmed the breakdown.
It is through Hodeïda that most of the humanitarian aid intended for the country transits, a vital issue in the war.
These strikes came after the Houthis claimed a drone and missile attack on Monday against oil and airport facilities in Abu Dhabi, capital of the Emirates (three dead).
The Emirates have warned that they will retaliate.
Without clearly saying who is behind the attack on the prison, the Emirates' ambassador to the UN, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, claimed that the military coalition had "a proportionate response in all its military operations".
She was speaking after a meeting of the UN Security Council which condemned "in the strongest terms the heinous terrorist attacks perpetrated in Abu Dhabi".
"Unacceptable"
During the conflict in Yemen, the military coalition was accused of multiple "blunders" against civilians.
She admitted "mistakes", but accused the Houthi rebels of using civilians as human shields.
The strike on the prison "is not acceptable", Norway's ambassador to the UN, Mona Juul, president of the UN Security Council, said in January.
In a tweet, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was "deeply shocked" by reports of coalition strikes on "populated areas", including Saada.
"The cost in human lives is unacceptable."
On January 3, the Houthis hijacked an Emirati-flagged ship in the Red Sea, further escalating tensions.
The coalition then warned that it would bomb Houthi-held ports.
After their capture of the capital Sanaa in 2014, the rebels managed to seize large swaths of Yemeni territory, particularly in the north.
The conflict has claimed 377,000 lives, according to the UN.
With AFP
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