Saada’s central prison reduced to rubble after a vicious airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on 21 Janaury, 2022. (Photo credit: Al Masirah TV)
Thousands of Yemeni citizens took to the streets on 21 January in various cities across the country to denounce the savage bombing of Hodeidah and Saada by the Saudi-led coalition, which left over 200 dead and wounded.
هل سيكون ملف الحرب على #اليمن على طاولة اجتماعات القمة العربية المقبلة في #الجزائر؟#انصروا_اليمن#الميادين #مجزرة_صعدة #الحديدة pic.twitter.com/dcvTvLzrUG
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) January 21, 2022
Hours earlier, Saudi-led coalition warplanes directly targeted the central prison in Saada, leaving at least 65 dead and over 120 wounded – including many African migrants.
Following the brutal attack, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Yemen said that since dawn, rescue crews had been pulling bodies out from under the rubble, with gruesome images of the devastation being shared across social media.
“The hospitals are full of martyrs and the wounded, and we desperately need medicine and medical equipment,” Saada Governor Mohammed Jaber Awad told reporters. “Many international organizations had previously visited the prison.”
Meanwhile, members of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, say that Saada hospital was so overwhelmed that “they cannot take any more patients.”
“There are many bodies still at the scene of the air strike, many missing people,” Ahmed Mahat, MSF head of mission in Yemen, said in a statement.
“It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It seems to have been a horrific act of violence.”
This attack came in conjunction with several airstrikes carried out in the port city of Hodeidah, during which at least six civilians were killed and 18 others were injured, with reports indicating several of the victims were children who were playing near the locations targeted.
The attack on Hodeidah also knocked out the internet across Yemen after the coalition bombed telecommunications infrastructure.
According to the NetBlocks internet traffic monitoring company, the disruption began around 1am local time, and affected TeleYemen, the state-owned company that controls internet access in the country.
In relation to this, Yemen’s Minister of Information under the National Salvation Government (NSG), Daif Allah Al-Shami, said that the Saudi-led coalition “wanted to commit a silent massacre today with the Internet cut off,” noting that “what happened in Syria is being implemented in our country.”
Saudi-led coalition officials said that their airstrikes targeted “legitimate military targets.”
Riyadh’s vicious air campaign against the Arab world’s poorest country was launched just five days after the Yemeni army successfully carried out rare drone and missile strikes against strategic targets deep inside the UAE.
These Yemeni strikes on the UAE came in retaliation for the seven years of war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and displaced millions more.