Saudi airstrike kills 70 in Yemen

An airstrike on a Yemen prison facility on Friday killed at least 70 people and wounded dozens of others, a Yemini rebel official told The Associated Press.

The Saudi Arabia-backed airstrike was part of an offensive that targeted the capital city of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeida in an effort to hammer the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Hodeida strike hit a telecommunications center and knocked out the internet, the AP reported.

MSF International, a humanitarian medical organization, said the airstrike on the prison facility in northern Sanaa left a hospital in the city with “138 wounded and 70 dead. They are so overwhelmed that they can’t take any more patients.”

“From what I hear from my colleague in Sa’ada there are many bodies still at the scene of the air strike, many missing people. It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It seems to have been a horrific act of violence,” said Ahmed Mahat, the organization’s head of mission in Yemen, in a tweet.

The strikes follow a drone attack claimed by the Houthi rebels, who said on Monday they hit the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The strike killed three people.

Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014, when the Houthis took control of the capital city to forge a new government. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, at least 100,000 people have died in the war since 2015.