The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen denied targeting a detention center in Yemen’s Saada province, saying the facility was not a site banned from hit attacks, Saudi state-run news agency SPA reported on Saturday. .
Rebels and an aid group said on Saturday that the death toll in the airstrike had reached at least 82 detainees.
Meanwhile, internet penetration in the Arab world’s poorest country has remained largely low as the coalition continued airstrikes in the capital of Sanaa and elsewhere.
Friday’s airstrike in northern Saada province was part of an intensified air and ground attack that marked the escalation of Yemen’s years of civil war. The conflict pits the internationally recognized government, aided by a Saudi-led coalition, against Iranian-backed rebels.
The increase comes after the Houthis claimed a drone and missile strike inside the capital of the United Arab Emirates earlier in the week. It also comes as government forces, aided by UAE-backed troops and coalition airstrikes, have recaptured the entire province of Shabwa from the Houthis and pressured them into the central province of Marib.
Ahmed Mahat, head of Doctors Without Borders, a charity mission in Yemen, said at least 82 people were killed and more than 265 injured in the airstrike.
Saudi coalition spokesman Brig. General Turki al-Malki alleged that the Houthis had not reported the site to the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross as in need of protection from airstrikes. He claimed that the Houthis’ failure to do so represented a “general deceptive view” of the militia in the conflict.
According to the humanitarian organization Save the Children, the Houthis used the prison complex to hold detained migrants, mostly Africans attempting to cross into Saudi Arabia from the war-torn country.
But Mr Mahat said the airstrikes hit a different part of the housing facility for other types of detainees. “The migrants there are safe,” he said.
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