Death Toll from Saudi-Led Air Strike on Sa'ada Detention Center Rises: Yemeni Minister
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A Saudi-led coalition air strike last week on a detention center in Yemen killed over 90 people and wounded more than 200, the Yemeni Health Minister said.
Minister of Public Health and Population in Yemen, Taha al-Mutawakal, in comments carried by the country’s Al Masirah TV, said 91 people had been killed and 236 hospitalized by the end of rescue operations that follow by a massacre committed by the US-sanctioned Saudi-Emirati aggression on Sa’ada province.
The Yemeni official indicated that since the beginning of January and the recent wave of escalation, the Ministry of Health has recorded the martyrdom of 150 citizens and the injury of 350 others who received treatment in hospitals, Al-Ahd News reported.
For his part, Secretary General of the Supreme Council for the Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and International Cooperation, Abdul Mohsen Tawoos, said that “this crime is a greater motive for the leadership to crush the criminals of the coalition of aggression”, pointing out that “the targeted prison was visited by various organizations and that prisons are prohibited by international laws from being targeted”.
Mohammad Jaber Awad, the governor of Sa'ada province, has sought the formation of an international investigating committee as well as the punishment of those responsible for the atrocity, saying that the Red Cross visited the targeted detention institution multiple times, and the coalition is aware that location being a prison, yet they chose to commit this crime.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces have gradually grown stronger, leaving Riyadh and its allies, most notably the UAE, bogged down in the country.