SANAA (Dispatches) --
Yemen’s armed forces called on foreign companies to leave the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after the Saudi-led coalition attacked a detention facility in northern Yemen on Friday, killing at least 100 people, while a second attack shut off the country’s internet.
The military coalition has intensified airstrikes against what it says are military targets after Yemen conducted an unprecedented retaliatory air assault on the UAE on Monday.
In a tweet posted on Friday evening, army spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree wrote: “After the massacres committed by U.S.-Saudi-UAE aggression today against Yemeni people, we advise foreign companies in the UAE to leave, as they are investing in an unsafe state as long as the rulers of this state continue to attack our country.”
UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash warned of imminent attack after the January 17 Abu Dhabi attack, which was claimed by Yemen’s popular Ansarullah movement.
Dubai alone is home to 45 Middle East and Africa headquarters of multinational companies, and more than 21,000 African companies.
Basheer Omar, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said numbers were still rising following Friday’s dawn attack on the temporary detention centre in Sa’da.
“There are more than 100 killed and injured... the numbers are going up,” said Omar, citing hospital figures.
Ahmed Mahat, the head of mission in Yemen for the medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres, called the incident a “horrific act of violence” and said it was “impossible to know how many people have been killed”.
“From what I hear from my colleague in Sa’da, there are many bodies still at the scene of the airstrike, many missing people. Al-Gumhourriyeh hospital in the city said it had received around 200 wounded, and that “they are so overwhelmed that they cannot take any more patients.”
Footage released by Yemen showed rescue workers pulling bodies from the rubble following the raid on the prison that has been used as a detention centre for migrant workers transiting the war-ravaged country.
Further south, in Hudaydah, video footage showed bodies amid rubble and dazed survivors after an airattack on a telecommunications hub. Yemen suffered a nationwide internet blackout following the attack, a web monitor said.
A statement from Save the Children said six children were killed in the attack on Hudaydah while playing soccer.
“Yemeni voices are already not heard well enough. So with the internet and telecommunications being down, people will be dying in a slow death while the world doesn’t
 know,” Afrah Nasser, a Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Middle East Eye.
“In legal terms, bombing civilian infrastructure is a war crime. So this is brutal, this is terrible for the civilians, for aid workers, for civilians, for the civil society organizations, for our human rights partners that we work with on the ground. How can we get reports out of Yemen?”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack on Saturday, calling for an investigation and accountability.
The Saudi-led coalition on Saturday denied targeting the detention centre, the Saudi official news agency SPA reported.
But Yemeni Information Minister Dhaifullah al-Shami warned of “volcanoes of rage” in response to the new atrocities.
“We are isolated from the rest of the world as a result of the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade. Nevertheless, the latest slaughter will spew out volcanoes of rage from Yemen,” he said.
“Criminals will not escape unpunished. What they saw in their capitals was nothing but initial warnings. The recent strikes against the UAE were the first message to the Saudi-led coalition and the Israeli regime.”
The fresh warning came after Yemeni forces carried out retaliatory drone and missile strikes against strategic facilities deep inside the UAE on Monday.
On Friday, thousands of Yemenis staged demonstrations in the capital Sana’a and other cities to condemn the bombings of Sa’da and Hudaydah.
The so-called Giants Brigades, sponsored by the UAE, have suspended their operations in the north after weeks of aiding the Saudi-backed government forces and their takfiri allies in their battle to capture the southeastern province of Shabwah and advance to Ma’rib to the north, reports said Saturday.
That advance came to a halt, Middle East Eye news outlet said.
A Giant Brigades fighter in Shabwah told the website that the forces halted their operations in Ma’rib after allegedly reaching populated areas.
Composed of around 15,000 fighters, the so-called Giants Brigades, known in Arabic as al-Amaliqa, have been a major muscle of the UAE in its ambitions to stake out a foothold in Yemen.
The UAE was part of the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to reinstate a former regime.
The Persian Gulf country has announced that it has reduced its military involvement in Yemen since 2019, but analysts have pointed out it retains significant influence through backing mercenaries and takfiri groups.
Following the retaliatory attacks, a Yemeni leader in Sanaa told MEE that Yemeni forces targeted the UAE “because it returned to the front line of the Yemen conflict again to fight us while we were about to take over Ma’rib”.
The Saudi kingdom and its allies launched their war on Yemen in March 2015 and have since carried out more than 22,000 airstrikes, with one-third striking non-military sites, including schools, factories and hospitals, according to the Yemen Data Project.
The UN has estimated the war had killed 377,000 people by the end of 2021, both directly and indirectly through hunger and disease.
The world body has also declared Yemen the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” as heavy artillery and airstrikes have hampered access to health care and increased pressure on the few facilities that are still functioning.