Yemen Houthi Saudi strike: Jawf prison attack kills seven, including child

Houthi rebels in Yemen on Monday accused Saudi Arabia of striking a prison in the country’s north, killing seven people, including a child, as tensions rose between the Iran-backed group and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces. At least seven others were wounded, including a woman, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.

The strike hit the Central Corrective Facility in Hazm, a strategic city in Jawf province. The prison’s warden told the Houthi al-Masirah news channel that 35 prisoners and a woman who had gone to visit her husband were trapped under the rubble. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia’s media ministry.

Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry, said the dead and injured were taken from the site after the attack. Al-Masirah satellite news channel aired 46 seconds of footage that it said showed the aftermath of the strike, with a collapsed building, broken concrete slabs and piles of rubble. Several people, including what appeared to be rescue teams, were seen moving carefully across the debris and searching the wreckage.

Houthi military spokesperson Brig Gen Yahya Saree accused Saudi Arabia of launching airstrikes and “committing massacres” in Jawf. He also accused Riyadh of deploying a reconnaissance drone and supplying mercenaries with various weapons. “The ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered or unpunished,” he said. Later on Monday, Saree said Houthi forces had downed four Saudi reconnaissance drones over the previous 24 hours, including one spotted on Monday morning in Bayda province.

The Houthi claim came as forces of the internationally recognised government advanced on several fronts in Yemen, including in Jawf, Bayda, Dahle and Marib provinces. Yemen plunged into civil war in 2014 when the Houthis moved from their northern stronghold and seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognised government to flee south and then into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war the following year in an attempt to restore the government.

Strikes on prisons have not been uncommon during the war. In 2022, a strike by the Saudi-led coalition hit a detention facility in Saada province, killing at least 87 prisoners and wounding about 266 others. In September 2019, another strike hit a Houthi-run detention facility in Dhamar province, killing more than 100 people and wounding dozens. The civil war in Yemen has killed at least 150,000 people, according to UN estimates, and has at times pushed the country to the brink of famine. A ceasefire that had largely held since 2022 is now in tatters, with the latest prison strike coming amid renewed fighting on multiple fronts.

With PTI Inputs

– Ends