SHAFAQNA- Dozens of people have been killed when a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition battling the Houthi movement bombed a prison in western Yemen.
More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention centre in Yemen, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The coalition said it had targeted a facility run by Houthi rebels that “stores drones and missiles”, but the rebels said the attack had levelled a building they used as a prison.
Yusuf al-Hadri, a spokesman for the Houthis’ ministry of health, said at least 60 people were killed in Sunday’s air raids which hit a complex used as a detention centre north of Dhamar city.
Fifty people were wounded, he told Al Masirah TV, adding that 185 prisoners of war were being held overall at the Dhamar Community College.
Nazem Saleh was among those held at the facility. “We were sleeping and around midnight, there were maybe three, or four, or six strikes,” he told The Associated Press news agency.
The ICRC rushed to the scene in the city of Dhamar with medical teams and hundreds of body bags, theguardian told.
“The location that was hit has been visited by ICRC before,” said Franz Rauchenstein, the committee’s head of delegation for Yemen. “It’s a college building that has been empty and has been used as a detention facility for a while. What is most disturbing is that [the attack was] on a prison. To hit such a building is shocking and saddening – prisoners are protected by international law.”