SANAA (Dispatches) – Saudi Arabia claimed it launched airstrikes against a military camp in the capital Sanaa on Thursday, attacks which turned out to have hit a prison compound, a sports stadium and a hospital.
The kingdom claimed it destroyed seven drone and weapons stores at the camp, Saudi state TV reported, adding it was in response to an armed drone launched from north Yemen towards Saudi’s Red Sea region of Jizan.
Authorities in Sanaa said bombs fell on a prison hosting more than 3,000 Saudi-backed militants who were captured in battles. The statement said the strikes caused panic and fear among prisoners.
Yemen’s Masirah TV also said the strikes had hit the Sabaeen neighborhood of Sanaa in the early hours, damaging some civilian homes and causing some damage to a maternity and children’s hospital.
A medical source said the strikes caused panic and fear among patients and medical staff and put the medical center out of service.
“The violent attacks hit the residential area in this street, causing damage to Oliya Hospital and residential houses,” one local resident told Al-Masirah.
Early Friday, explosions hit the Al-Thawra Sports Complex, which is home turf for the Yemeni national football team.
“The Saudi airstrikes targeted my bus...look at the neighborhood, shattered windows are everywhere...they attacked when everyone was resting at their homes,” another resident said.
“This is a residential area and there is no military base or camp around here. May God damn the U.S., Israel and their allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, an anyone who targets innocent people late at night,” the third resident said.
Saudi fighters also conducted airstrikes against several buildings on Zubairi Street, as well as a number of sites next to Baghdad

School and the Vocational Institute.
Medics in northwestern Sa’ada said the city’s hospitals had received one body and treated 11 wounded people following an artillery attack by Saudi troops on the Al-Rago district on the border.

Calls for UN probe

A senior member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council denounced the airstrikes against various neighborhoods in the capital Sana’a, calling on the United Nations to launch an investigation into the air raid on the Al-Thawra Sports Complex.
“The decision by the coalition of aggression to give a six-hour ultimatum for the evacuation of the stadium resembles what the Zionist entity is doing in the Gaza Strip,” Muhammed Ali al-Houthi wrote in a series of tweets.
He called on UN experts to visit the bombed sports complex and carry out a careful investigation.
“If they found drones or missiles inside the stadium, as leaders of the Saudi-led coalition allege, we would not hesitate to hand them over to the United Nations. But if they (the experts) could not discover anything, the leaders of the alliance must then commit themselves to stopping the bombing campaign,” Houthi said.
Nasr al-Deen Amer, Deputy Minister of Information in Yemen’s National Salvation Government, called upon all Yemeni journalists and members of the press to visit the Al-Thawra Sports Complex, and see for themselves that there are no munitions there.
Yemen Olympic Committee appealed to the International Olympic Committee, the Olympic Council of Asia, relevant international organizations and the Security Council to intervene and stop airstrikes against sports facilities in Yemen.
The committee said in a statement that sports centers in Yemen are civilian facilities, have nothing to do with military applications and do not contain any sort of weapons.
“No weapons or military equipment were stockpiled inside all the sports facilities targeted since the start of the Saudi-led aggression in March 2015. Many Yemeni sports facilities, including stadiums and closed halls, are now in ruins, leaving athletes deprived of exercising and performing their activities. It took many years and huge sums of money for these centers to be built. It is, therefore, not easy to reconstruct them,” the statement read.
The committee called upon sports federations worldwide and all concerned parties to intervene quickly, and to stop Saudi aerial assaults against the remaining Yemeni sports facilities so that Yemeni youths and athletes of Yemen would not find themselves without stadiums.
Saudi Arabia has launched thousands of airstrikes inside Yemen that hit markets, schools and hospitals. Yemeni forces have regularly sent drones and fired missiles into Saudi Arabian cities in retaliation.

Pledges of ‘Painful’ Response

Muhammad al-Bukhaiti, a member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, warned Saudi Arabia to brace itself for “heavy and painful” retaliatory attacks.
He told the Arabic service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency that the Yemeni army forces and fighters from the Popular Committees will soon respond strongly to the airstrikes on Sanaa.
He said the Riyadh regime has reached a stalemate in the war on Yemen, and been unable to attain any of its objectives, opting to pound residential buildings and civilian facilities, such as Sanaa airport in the face of intense retaliatory rocket and drone strikes.
Bukhaiti said the heavy bombardment of Sana’a airport comes despite the fact that the site remain out of service.
“Saudis have also bombed most of important bridges in Sana’a. All of this shows they are punishing the Yemeni nation with military strikes and siege. Attacks on civilians will not go unanswered. Yemen now has the ability to strike targets deep inside Saudi Arabia. Saudi attacks once again exposed the hypocritical position of the international community, which has so far failed to release a statement in condemnation of attacks by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on civilian sites,” he said.
Bukhaiti said there is definitely a connection between the advances of Yemeni army forces and Popular Committees fighters in Ma’rib and the escalation of Saudi airstrikes on Sana’a.
On Friday, Yemeni army and popular committees took control of strategic areas in the northern province of Jawf on the border with Saudi Arabia, Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV reported.
The network cited field sources as saying that Yemeni forces are tightening their grip on the area of Alyutamah, the administrative center of Jawf’s Khabb wa ash Sha’af district.
Alyutamah, the last stronghold of Saudi-backed militants in Jawf, was captured by the Yemeni forces overnight, according to a report by Arabi 21 news website.
Alyutamah is strategically important as it lies near the border with Saudi Arabia and as an international road, which leads to Albuqa border crossing that connects Yemen and Saudi Arabia, passes through it.
Albuqa border crossing lies in the eastern part of Saada province, opposite the Al-Khadhra border crossing which is located in southern Saudi Arabia.
Later Friday, Al-Mayadeen said Yemeni forces also took control of the strategic international road in Alyutamah.