MORE THAN 100 people are believed to have been killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention centre in Yemen.

The coalition said it targeted a facility run by the Huthi rebels that “stores drones and missiles”, but the rebels said the attack had levelled a building they used as a prison.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) rushed to the scene in the city of Dhamar with medical teams and hundreds of body bags.

“The location that was hit has been visited by ICRC before,” Rauchenstein told AFP from Dhamar. “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.”

Rauchenstein said that over 100 people were estimated to be dead, and that at least 40 survivors were being treated for their injuries in hospitals in the city, south of the capital Sanaa.

ICRC teams collecting bodies were “working relentlessly to find survivors under the rubble”, he said, but cautioned that the chances of finding any were very slim.

Humanitarian crisis

Footage obtained by AFP showed heavy damage to the building and several bodies lying in the rubble, as bulldozers worked to clear away huge piles of debris.

The coalition intervened in 2015 to support the government after the Iran-aligned Huthis swept out of their northern stronghold to seize Sanaa and much of Yemen – the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Fighting since then has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and sparked what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Both sides stand accused of actions that could amount to war crimes.

The coalition has been blacklisted by the UN for the killing of children, while Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse the Huthis of using civilians as human shields in densely populated areas.

The Saudi-led coalition said in a statement Sunday carried by the state-run Al-Ekhbariya news channel that it targeted a rebel “military position in Dhamar that stores drones and missiles”.

“We took all precautionary measures to protect civilians,” it added.

However, the Huthi television channel Al-Masirah said that dozens were killed and injured in seven air strikes that hit the building.

- © AFP 2019.