AT least 68 African migrants have been killed in a US air strike on a detention centre in Houthi-controlled north-western Yemen, the armed group’s TV channel says.
Al Masirah reported that another 47 migrants were injured, most of them critically, when the centre in Saada province was bombed. It posted graphic footage showing multiple bodies covered in the rubble of a destroyed building.
A US defence official said the US military’s Central Command was aware of the claims of civilian casualties.
The strike came hours after Central Command announced its forces had hit more than 800 targets since President Donald Trump ordered an intensification of the air campaign against the Houthis on 15 March.
It said the strikes had “killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders”, including senior officials overseeing missile and drone programmes.
Houthi-run authorities have said the strikes have killed dozens of civilians, but they have reported few casualties among the group’s members.
The migrant detention centre in Saada was reportedly holding 115 Africans when it was hit four times shortly before 05:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on Monday, according to Al Masirah.
The casualty reports could not be immediately verified, but Al Masirah’s videos showed first responders recovering the bodies of at least a dozen men among pieces of concrete and metal debris on the floor of a large building with partially destroyed walls and no roof.
At a local hospital, another injured man told Al Masirah: “The strike hit us while we were sleeping, that’s it.”
Following a visit to the scene, the chairman of the Somali community in Yemen, Ibrahim Cabdulqaadir Macallin, told the BBC: “It was tragic and horrific… I saw burnt people. We couldn’t recognise some of the bodies we saw.”
He said the number of Somali migrants who were killed was “very small” because a group had been removed from the detention centre three days earlier, and that the majority of the detainees were Ethiopians.
He also said that the facility was in an “open area” and “not near any military base”.
The Houthi-run interior ministry condemned what it called the “deliberate bombing” of the facility and said it constituted a “war crime”.
The US defence official said Central Command took the claims of civilian casualties very seriously, and that it was currently conducting a battle-damage assessment and inquiry into them.
The UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said it was “deeply saddened by the reports of the tragic loss of life in Saada”.
