More than 60 killed, including children, in airstrikes in Yemen

3 yıl önce

CAIRO — More than 60 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in airstrikes in Yemen, aid organizations and a Houthi official said on Friday, as the death toll mounts in a particularly violent week for the war-torn country.

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At least three children are among the dozens of people killed in the past day, the humanitarian organization Save the Children said in a statement. They were killed while playing soccer near communications infrastructure in the port city of Hodeidah that was badly damaged overnight, said Amjad Yamin, the media, communications and advocacy director for Save the Children in Yemen.

More than 60 adults were then killed early Friday morning when another airstrike hit a detention center in the northern city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold. Aid workers said migrants were among those being held in the detention center.

“To wake up to this level of civilian death toll is honestly horrifying,” Yamin said.

Though no one has claimed responsibility for the airstrikes, the only forces capable of carrying them out are the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen’s war in 2015 against the dominant Houthi forces.

In recent days, the coalition has ramped up its airstrikes following a Houthi-claimed attack on Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates on Monday, that left two Indian citizens and one Pakistani dead. The UAE is a partner in the coalition that intervened on behalf of the Yemeni government following the Houthi takeover of the capital at the beginning of the war. On Monday night, hours after the attack in Abu Dhabi, more than a dozen people were killed in at least two coalition airstrikes on a home in the capital Sanaa.

The war in Yemen has dragged on for seven years, causing a disastrous humanitarian crisis and widespread hunger. In recent weeks, the coalition has ramped up its airstrikes, targeting Houthi infrastructure but also killing civilians. In December, they struck the airport in Sanaa, which has long been closed except for humanitarian flights due to coalition restrictions on airspace.

The Houthis said its attack on the UAE was intended as retaliation for Emirati-backed forces who recently claimed to have regained key territory from the Houthis.

The United States once strongly backed the Saudi-led coalition. But President Biden announced early last year that Washington would withdraw support for the coalition’s offensive operations, which has been blamed for the deaths of thousands of civilians. The Trump administration had previously halted U.S. refueling for Saudi jets operating against the Houthis. Certain members of Congress had long expressed outrage over U.S. involvement in the war, including in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

The Biden administration previously reversed an 11th-hour Trump administration decision to designate the Houthis as terrorists, amid widespread concerns from humanitarians that it would impede lifesaving aid work in the country. But this week, following a request from the UAE, Biden said re-listing the Houthis as terrorists is “under consideration.”

A Biden-appointed envoy is currently participating in negotiations intended to end the conflict. But those talks have been hampered in part by ground fighting that for the last year has been concentrated primarily in the contested province of Marib, the government’s last major stronghold in the north. Both sides are eager to control the province’s key oil and gas resources.

Internet was down across most of Yemen on Friday, adding to civilians’ distress as they attempted to contact friends and relatives following the devastating strikes. The Houthis blamed the Internet outage on the strike in Hodeidah.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that al-Gumhourriyeh Hospital in Saada has received 138 wounded in the attack and recorded 70 deaths following the attack on the prison. “They are so overwhelmed that they can’t take any more patients,” the statement said.

“It is impossible to know how many people have been killed,” Ahmed Mahat, head of the organization’s Yemen office said in a statement. “It seems to have been a horrific act of violence.”

Mutahar Almarwani, director general of the health office in Sanaa, said the detention center was targeted early Friday morning and that more than 60 people had been killed. He also said death toll was expected to rise.

The Saudi-led coalition did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the strikes, and did not put out a statement on Hodeidah or Saada. But on Friday it did issue a statement on military operations in the contested province of Marib, saying it had conducted 28 targeted operations against the Houthis over the past 24 hours, destroying 13 military vehicles and killing over 90 group members.

Over the past year, both sides have suffered serious casualties on the front lines in Marib, where the Houthis have deployed drones against government troops in their efforts to take control of the province.

Ali Al-Mujahed contributed to this report from Sanaa, Yemen and Sarah Dadouch from Beirut.

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