Dozens killed in airstrike on Yemeni prison: MSF | Humanitarian Crisis News

Dozens of people have been killed in an airstrike on a prison in northern Yemen, according to the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) charity, after highlighting a deadly escalation of violence in the country on a night of deadly bombing. conflict underway.

A Saudi-led military coalition has stepped up airstrikes against allegations of military targets linked to the Houthi rebel movement, following an unprecedented attack by Houthis on a member of the United Arab Emirates coalition on Monday and a cross-border missile and drone strike. In Saudi cities.

Images released by Huthi on Friday shed the bodies of rescue workers from the rubble after a dawn attack at the Saada detention center.

At least 70 people have been killed and 138 injured in an attack, an MSF spokesman told AFP.

The figures come from a hospital in Saada, a spokesman said, adding that “two others in the city have also received many injuries and are examining the debris.”

Yemeni Red Cross International Committee (ICRC) spokesman Basheer Omar said the numbers were rising in the wake of the attack on Saada, the hometown of the Houthi rebel movement.

“There are more than 100 dead and injured … the numbers are rising,” he said, citing data from ICRC-assisted two hospitals in Saada.

Further south in the vital port city of Hodeidah, a video released by Houthis showed the bodies among the rubble and the survivors were stunned by a Saudi-led coalition air strike after a telecommunications site was taken out. Yemen has suffered a nationwide internet blackout, a web monitor said.

NetBlocks said the internet outage began around 01:00 local time (22:00 GMT on Thursday) and affected TeleYemen, the state’s monopoly that controls the country’s internet access.

Then we can’t get in touch with our loved ones in Yemen #saudi/#UAE the airstrikes hit Telecom #hudaidah. This is worrying as there has been an increase in airstrikes against civilians in recent days, including. children inside #Sanaa #hudadah

– Sarah Alareqi (@SarahAreqi) January 21, 2022

The San Diego Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis and the San Francisco-based company CloudFlare also reported a nationwide disruption at the same time affecting Yemen.

More than 12 hours later, it ran out of Internet. The Norwegian Refugee Council condemned the attack as “a significant attack on civilian infrastructure, which will also have an impact on our support”.

At least three children were killed in an airstrike in Hodeidah, according to the UK’s Save the Children.

The organization said at least 60 people were killed in the Saada airstrike and more than 100 were injured, most of them migrants, he added.

“Saada’s initial death toll is staggering,” Gillian Moyes, Yemen’s country director for Save the Children, said in a statement.

“Migrants looking for a better life for themselves and their families is a picture we did not expect to wake up dozens of injured Yemeni civilians in Yemen.”

Climbing in conflict

Mohammed al-Attab of Al Jazeera said thousands of Houthis and their supporters had demonstrated in Sanaa and other cities in Yemen, condemning Saudi attacks.

“These attacks, according to an official spokesman for Houthis, will not weaken the resilience of the Yemenis,” al-Attab said in a statement from the capital. They have threatened to attack Khalifah Tower [in Dubai] If the Basque Country continues to take part in the Saudi-led coalition war. “

The airstrikes took place five days after the Huthi claimed responsibility for a drone and missile attack on the United Arab Emirates, killing three people and causing retaliation.

According to Save the Children, the escalation of the conflict has increased the death toll by 60 percent in the last three months of 2021, and 2022 is poised to have broader consequences for civilians.

The United Nations Security Council was due to meet at 3pm on Friday in an emergency session on the attack on the Houthis against the Basque Country at the request of the Gulf state, which has occupied one of the council’s non-permanent seats. January 1.

The Basque Country is part of a Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting rebels since 2015 in an unresolved conflict that has displaced millions of Yemenis and left them on the brink of starvation.

The coalition claimed responsibility for the attack on Hodeidah, a breakaway port in a broken country, but did not say it had carried out an attack on Saada.

The Saudi state news agency said the coalition had carried out “precision air strikes … to destroy the capabilities of the Houthi militia in Hodeidah.”

The Yemeni civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis took over the capital Sanaa, and Saudi-led forces intervened to promote the government the following year.

Tensions have risen in recent weeks after the Basque-backed Giants Brigade expelled rebels from Shabwa province, undermining the month-long campaign to take the city of Marib further north.

January 3, houthis He hijacked a ship flying the flag of the United Arab Emirates In the Red Sea, the coalition warned that it would target rebel-held ports.

The 11 international crew members of the ship are in captivity.

And on Monday, they proclaimed a remote attack they hit oil facilities and Abu Dhabi Airport in the Basque Country, killing two Indians and one Pakistani, and injuring six others.

This attack – the first deadly attack recognized by the U.S. within its borders and claimed by the Houthis – opened a new front in the Yemeni war and escalated tensions in the region.

as revenge the coalition carried out airstrikes He killed 14 people against rebel-held Sanaa.

The UN estimates that the war killed 377,000 people by the end of 2021, both directly and indirectly as a result of famine and disease.

Basque Presidential Adviser Anwar Gargash warned that the country would use its right to defend itself after the Abu Dhabi attack.

“The emirates have a legal and moral right to defend their land, population and sovereignty, and they will exercise that right to defend themselves and prevent terrorist acts by the Houthi group,” said US special envoy Hans Grundberg, a WAM official. news agency.