SANAA (Dispatches) -- Air strikes last week on a detention centre in Yemen killed around 90 people and wounded more than 200, the Yemeni administration’s health minister said on Tuesday, providing an updated toll after rescue efforts ended.
The United Nations said on Saturday that at least 60 people were killed in the attacks. Witnesses described blasts hitting the center, which was reduced to rubble.
Saudi-led aggression has escalated in recent weeks, with more airstrikes against the country. Yemeni forces have stepped up missile and drone attacks in retaliation on the United Arab Emirates and cross-border launches on neighboring Saudi Arabia.
In Sa’da, survivors of the attack on the holding facility were still in hospital on Sunday.
Inmate Muhammad al-Khulaidi, who suffered a broken leg and burns, said he managed to pull himself from the rubble while some of his cell mates were killed.
“I was trying to free my leg from under the pillar and the warplane continued to bombard us,” he told Reuters. “I tried, I tried, and I removed the debris from under my leg, and I got out. I could not help my friends because my leg was broken,” he said.
Yemeni Health Minister Taha al-Mutawakal, in comments carried by Al-Masirah TV, said 91 people had been killed and 236 hospitalized by the end of rescue operations.
Early Tuesday morning, Saudi coalition warplanes launched new airstrikes on the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and nearby cities.
Al-Masira said they carried out five rounds of airstrikes on Al-Nahdin and Al-Hafa areas in the Al-Sabeen district of Sana’a, and a raid on the Faj Attan district in the mountainous outskirts of the capital.
Saudi warplanes also launched three raids on the Jarban area in the Sanhan district of the capital, two raids on the Arhab district, in addition to destroying the telecommunications network with two raids on the district of Al-Hosn in Khawlan.
The airstrikes continue amid a nationwide internet blackout since the Saudi-led coalition bombed a telecommunications hub in Yemen’s port city of Hudaydah last week.
The incident has severely limited independent media and human rights monitoring efforts. Observers say the attack appears a deliberate move by the Saudi-led coalition to keep the world in the dark about the extent of death and destruction resulting from its airstrikes in Yemen.
Yemen’s northwestern provinces of Hajjah and Sa’ada were targeted earlier on Monday.
Yemen’s Supreme Political Council said in a statement late Monday that the recent large-scale operation, dubbed Yemen Hurricane II, was launched deep inside Saudi Arabia and the UAE in response to their massacre in Yemen.
“The operation achieved our goals in these two aggressor countries,” the statement said, calling on the Yemeni army and popular committees to “intensify their efforts to conduct unique operations against the aggressors.”
The council said Yemeni army forces and popular committees are steadfast in liberating all the occupied territories. “The countries that do not know the history of Yemen should reconsider their calculations today.”
The statement touched on Yemen’s retaliatory attacks, saying “what you saw was only a small portion of our capabilities in counterattacks”.
The retaliatory attacks came only a week after Yemeni forces carried out airstrikes against strategic facilities deep inside the UAE on January 17, using domestically-manufactured combat drones and ballistic missiles.
Ansarullah spokesman Muhammad Abdul-Salam warned the UAE that the country’s military and economic facilities would be targeted by the Yemeni armed forces if it continued its aggression against the impoverished country.
“The UAE cannot tolerate missile attacks as it is a small state relying on security, economy and relations, and includes a grouping of international companies operating in the region,” he told Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television.
Commenting on Yemen Hurricane II operation, he said the UAE is “a state without depth, therefore, if the UAE loses its security, the state, prestige and everything will be lost”.
“We were counting on the UAE to take a clear position, after it twice announced its withdrawal from Yemen.”
Abdul-Salam said the UAE “unjustly and slanderously attacked Yemen, and it must bear the consequences of its action. The Yemeni response will continue, God willing, and will not stop as long as there is a raid on Yemen.”