UN Denounces Deadly Airstrike by Saudi-led Military Coalition in Yemen’s Sa’ada

Saturday, 22 January 2022 2:14 AM 

Press TV

This image grab from a handout video made available by the Ansarullah media center shows destruction at a prison in Sa’ada in northern Yemen after it was hit in an airstrike by the Saudi-led military coalition, on January 21, 2022.

The United Nations has condemned an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s northern province of Sa’ada that killed dozens of people, in the latest act of aggression by the Riyadh regime against the impoverished nation.

Warplanes of the Saudi-led military coalition pounded a detention center in Sa’ada in the early hours of Friday, killing at least 70 people and injuring some 140 others, with reports saying that the death toll is expected to rise since many of the wounded were seriously hurt.

On Friday evening, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that the UN chief had condemned “the airstrikes launched earlier today by the Saudi-led coalition against a detention center in Sa’ada city.”

Dujarric went on to say that further airstrikes were carried out by the invading coalition elsewhere in Yemen on Friday, adding that the strikes also led to deaths and injuries among civilians, including children.

He said an airstrike targeted telecommunications facilities in tightly-besieged Hudaydah that significantly disrupted vital internet services across much of the impoverished country.

“The secretary-general calls for prompt, effective and transparent investigations into these incidents to ensure accountability,” Dujarric said, adding that Guterres also called for urgent de-escalation of the situation.

Separately, Save the Children, for its part, said in a statement that three children had died in the western city of Hudaydah.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies – including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – launched a brutal war against Yemen in March 2015.

The war was launched to eliminate Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The war, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals, but it has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people. The UN refers to the situation in Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories.

Meanwhile, Yemeni forces have in recent months gone from strength to strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in Yemen.