Diana Shalhub
22 January 2022•Update: 22 January 2022
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen denied Saturday reports about striking a detention center in Yemen’s northern Saada province as "misleading", according to Saudi state-run media.
On Friday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), an international medical body, said at least 70 people were killed and scores injured in coalition airstrikes on Remand Prison in Saada.
In a statement, the coalition said the reports about striking the prison were “incorrect” and reflect the Houthi rebels’ “usual misleading approach," the Saudi state news agency SPA reported.
It said the detention center “was not included in the non-targeting lists according to the mechanism approved with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Yemen".
The target "does not meet the criteria set forth in the provisions of international humanitarian law and its customary rules related to detention centers from the Third Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War," the statement said.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement that an attack on a detention center in Saada had killed and wounded more than 100 detainees.
The Saudi-led coalition has intensified attacks on Yemen in recent days in the wake of a Houthi attack that killed three people in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
* Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar
