Dozens of people have been killed in an air raid in a prison in Northern Yemen.
This is according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Medicins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) after a night of deadly bombing highlighted a dramatic escalation in violence in the country’s long-running conflict.
A Saudi-led military coalition has intensified air raids on what it has said are military targets linked to the Houthi rebel movement. It was after the Houthis conducted an unprecedented assault on coalition member, the United Arab Emirates on Monday, January 17, 2022, and further cross-border missiles and drones, launched at Saudi cities.
Footage released by the Houthis on Friday, January 21, 2022, showed rescue workers, pulling bodies out from the bricks, following the dawn raid on the temporary detention centre in Saada.
At least 70 people were killed, leaving 138 others wounded in the attack, an MSF spokesperson told the media.
The figures came from one hospital in Saada, the MFS spokesperson said, adding, “Two others in the city have received many wounded as well and the rubble is still being searched.”
Spokesperson for the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) in Yemen, Basheer Omar, said numbers were still rising following the attack in Saada, the home city of the Houthi rebel movement.
“There are more than 100 killed and injured … the numbers are going up,” he said, citing figures at two Saada hospitals supported by the ICRC.
In the vital port city of Hodeidah, video released by the Houthis showed bodies in the bricks and dazed survivors after an overnight air attack from the Saudi-led coalition, which took out a telecommunications hub.
According to a web monitor, Yemen suffered a nationwide internet blackout.
NetBlocks, a telecommunications hub said the internet disruption began around 1am local time (22:00 GMT on Thursday, January 20, 2022) and affected TeleYemen, the state-owned monopoly that controls internet access in the country.
The San Diego-based Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis and San Francisco-based internet firm, CloudFlare also noted a nationwide outage affecting Yemen beginning around the same time.
More than 12 hours later, the internet remained down. The Norwegian Refugee Council has criticized the attack, describing it as “a blatant attack on civilian infrastructure that will also impact our aid delivery.”
According to the UK-based charity Save the Children, at least three children were killed in the Hodeidah air raid.
The organisation said at least, 60 people were killed in the air raid in Saada and more than 100 others wounded, mostly migrants, it added.
Save the Children’s country director in Yemen, Gillian Moyes, in a statement said “The initial casualties report from Saada is horrifying.”
“Migrants seeking better lives for themselves and their families, Yemeni civilians injured by the dozens is a picture we never hoped to wake up to in Yemen.”
Escalation in conflict
Media reports noted that thousands of Houthis and their supporters demonstrated in Sanaa and other cities across Yemen, condemning the Saudi attacks.
The air raids came five days after the Houthis claimed a drone-and-missile attack on the United Arab Emirates, killing three people and prompting warnings of retaliation.
According to Save the Children, the escalation of the conflict has resulted in a 60 percent increase in civilian casualties in the last three months of 2021, with 2022 already poised to have wider consequences for civilians.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet at 15:00 GMT on Friday, January 21, 2022, in an emergency session on the Houthi attacks against the UAE. This was at the request of the Gulf state, which has occupied one of the non-permanent seats on the council since Saturday, January 1, 2022
The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting the rebels since 2015, in a tight conflict that has displaced millions of Yemenis, leaving them on the brink of famine.
The coalition also claimed responsibility for the attack in Hodeidah, a lifeline port for the shattered country, but did not say it had carried out any raids on Saada.
Saudi Arabia’s state news agency said the coalition carried out “precision airstrikes … to destroy the capabilities of the Houthi militia in Hodeidah”.
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis overran the capital Sanaa, prompting Saudi-led forces to intervene to prop up the government the following year.
Tensions have soared in recent weeks after the UAE-backed Giants Brigade, drove the rebels out of Shabwa province, undermining their months-long campaign to take the key city of Marib further north.
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