Rescuers dug through the rubble of a Houthi-run prison that was hit in an airstrike in northern Yemen earlier this week, even as the Saudi-led coalition renewed its attacks on rebel areas Wednesday. Rescuers recovered four bodies, raising the death toll at the prison to 23 people, the Houthis said.
The prison collapsed on Monday after it was hit when the coalition targeted the strategic city of Hazm in the northern Jawf province, which in turn prompted the Houthis to launch a wave of missile and drone strikes on southern Saudi Arabia that wounded 73.
The flare-up was a major escalation in renewed fighting between an important US ally and the Iranian proxy group, further destabilising a region rocked by nearly three years of conflict, most recently the Iranian-American war that delivered a blow to the global economy.
Hassan Saboula, director of the civil defense agency in Jawf, said a child was among the dead and rescue teams were searching for seven people missing.
The identities of those killed were yet to be determined, al-Masirah satellite news channel cited Saboula as saying. The strike also wounded at least seven people, including a woman who was visiting her husband, said Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.
In a statement Wednesday, Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed that the prison strike was conducted by an F15-SA Saudi aircraft.
He said that the aircraft took off from King Khalid Air Base in Khamis Mushait at 4:30 pm on Monday, hit the prison and returned to the base 15 minutes later.
The Saudi government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The rebels said they targeted the base on Tuesday, as part of their wave of strikes on several cities in southern Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, the coalition launched airstrikes on Houthi military facilities in the provinces of Marib and Jawf on Wednesday.
Yemen plunged into civil war in 2014 when the Houthis descended from their northern stronghold and seized the capital, Sana’a, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee southward, then into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition entered the Yemen war the following year in an attempt to restore the government. The war has killed at least 150,000 people, according to UN estimates, and at times pushed the country to the brink of famine.
Escalation between the rebels and the coalition started when the Houthis attempted in July to fly a plane from Tehran to Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, challenging a decade-long air and naval blockade by the coalition, which struck the runway of the Yemeni airport, preventing the landing of the flight.
Houthis have since targeted Saudi Arabia and attacked Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. On Tuesday, they hit several Saudi oil facilities and utilities and some operations have since been temporarily suspended, according to the Saudi Energy Ministry.
The rebels have been attacking Saudi-allied government forces on multiple fronts in Yemen. However, government forces turned the tide earlier this month, striking Houthi positions across Yemen’s west coast on the Red Sea.
