This archive report was first published on 1 September 2019.
On September 1, 2019, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that over 100 people were estimated to have been killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention centre in Yemen.
The coalition claimed to have targeted a facility run by the Huthi rebels that 'stores drones and missiles', but the rebels denied this, stating that the attack had levelled a building they used as a prison.
ICRC teams rushed to the scene in the city of Dhamar with medical teams and hundreds of body bags, with ICRC head of delegation for Yemen, Franz Rauchenstein, stating that the location had been visited by ICRC before and was a college building that had been empty and used as a detention facility.
"What is most disturbing is that (the attack was) on a prison. To hit such a building is shocking and saddening - prisoners are protected by international law," Rauchenstein said.
At least 40 survivors were being treated for their injuries in hospitals in the city, south of the capital Sanaa, with ICRC teams working to find survivors under the rubble, although the chances of finding any were very slim.
The coalition intervened in 2015 to support the government after the Iran-aligned Huthis swept out of their northern stronghold to seize Sanaa and much of Yemen, sparking what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
