Arab coalition warplanes bombed a security complex near
the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, killing 60 people including
inmates of a prison on the site, a regional official, relatives and
medical sources said on Sunday.
Axar.az reports referring to Reuters.
The prison in the city's al-Zaydiyah district was holding 84
inmates when it was struck three times late on Saturday, Hashem
al-Azizi, deputy governor of the Houthi rebel-controlled Hodeidah
province of the same name.
Local officials said the site lies within a security complex for
the area guarded by Houthi militiamen but that only prison security
guards were present during the night-time air strike.
The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Yemen's armed Houthi
movement since March 2015 to try to restore the internationally
recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was driven into
exile by the Iran-allied group in late 2014.
A Reuters witness at the security complex said the entire
building was destroyed and medics pulled about 17 bodies away -
many of them missing limbs - while others remained stuck under the
rubble.
One of the strikes directly targeted the building, the witness
added, bringing it down over the heads of the prisoners, while two
others hit the gate of the complex and nearby administration
buildings.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition did not immediately
respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The air attack was one of the deadliest among thousands of
bombings which have largely failed to dislodge the Houthis from the
capital Sanaa but have repeatedly hit schools, markets, hospitals
and homes, killing many civilians.
Rights groups have said the raids may amount to war crimes, but
an investigative body set up by the coalition largely defended its
methods in an August report which concluded that Houthi rebels
regularly deploy to civilian sites.
The Houthis deny this, and a top official in the movement
criticized the United Nations and the Saudis' key ally and arms
supplier, the United States, for not doing enough to hold the
kingdom accountable for its air strikes.
"We condemn the position of the international community and the
U.N. for providing cover for the crimes of Saudi Arabia against
Yemenis, and they are subject to the wishes of America," Saleh
al-Samad said in a statement late on Saturday.
The bombing may signal a renewed uptick in violence a day after
Hadi rejected a new U.N. peace proposal to end the turmoil in the
impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, saying the deal would only
be a path to more war and destruction.
Speaking after meeting U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed in
Riyadh, Hadi said the agreement would "reward the rebels and
penalize the Yemeni people and legitimacy", according to the
government-controlled Saba news agency.
According to a copy of the proposal seen by Reuters, the plan
would sideline Hadi and set up a government of less divisive
figures.
Hadi's opponents accuse him of commanding only a small support
base in Yemen and of being unable to bring its warring factions
together given that he invited the Saudi-led coalition to intervene
in the civil war.