Yemen: Riyadh-led coalition denies targeting rebel-held prison

Published on : 01/22/2022 – 07:40

The Saudi-led military coalition on Saturday (January 22nd) denied in a statement that it had targeted a rebel-held detention center in Yemen, an attack that killed at least 70 people on Friday.

The reports of the targeting of the Saada detention center (north) are “unfounded”, said a statement from the spokesperson for this coalition, quoted by the official Saudi press agency. The coalition had claimed Friday a raid against the city of Hodeida (west).

The coalition, intervening since 2015 in the country at war, says it examined this information in an “extremely serious” way before concluding that it was “unfounded” and rested on “no basis”, according to this spokesperson, the General Turki Al-Malki, who accuses the Houthi rebels of “disinformation”.

Saudi Arabia leads the coalition made up of Muslim countries including the United Arab Emirates, which supports Yemeni government forces against Houthi rebels backed by Iran.

While denying that he was targeted by the coalition, the statement noted that the detention center of Saada is not part of “the list of prohibited targets in accordance with the mechanism approved by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of humanitarian organizations in Yemen (OCHA).

Washington calls for “de-escalation”

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.

It was not immediately possible to know who the detainees were or 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.

The United States called for “de-escalation” on Friday, citing “more than 100 casualties in recent days” including at least 70 dead in the airstrike on the prison, according to the State Department.

UN boss Antonio Guterres condemned “the strikes by the Saudi-led coalition against a detention center in Saada” which, according to him, “leaved at least 60 people dead and more than 100 injured”. He also denounced the strikes in Hodeida and called for “effective investigations”.

With AFP