RIYADH: The military coalition fighting Yemen’s Ansar Allah fighters said on Monday it was unaware that prisoners were held at a facility it targeted with deadly air strikes.
“The coalition was never informed... about the location,” spokesman Turki al Maliki told a press conference, a day after the strike which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it feared had left some 130 detainees dead.
“The Ansar Allah fighters bear full responsibility for making this a location for Yemeni citizens who have been forcibly disappeared,” he added.
Maliki reiterated the coalition’s stance that the site in the city of Dhamar was used to store drones and defence systems.
“The (facility) was not on the ‘no strike list’ of sites in the city of Dhamar,” he said. “Some reports have quoted the ICRC as saying it has gone to the site a number of times. The coalition has never been informed... about the location.”
The military coalition intervened in 2015 to support the government after the Ansar Allah fighters swept out of their northern stronghold to seize Sanaa and much of Yemen.
Fighting since then has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and sparked what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, parties in the Yemeni conflict must re-engage in a political process to end the war, United Nations special envoy Martin Griffiths said on Monday, a day after a coalition air strike killed dozens in Yemen.
“Parties need to urgently re-engage in the political process to end the war and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation,” Griffiths said after a meeting with Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom in the Jordanian capital Amman.
Wallstrom’s stop in Amman is part of a regional tour aimed at shoring up support for a political settlement in Yemen based on an agreement reached during UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden in December.
The talks between representatives of the government and Ansar Allah led to an agreement that included the withdrawal of forces from Hodeida city, a truce and a prisoner exchange. The agreement has not been fully implemented.
“Sweden fully supports tireless UN efforts for a renewed political process in Yemen. Dialogue on situation in Aden and implementation of Stockholm agreement on Hodeida are urgently needed,” Wallstrom wrote in a tweet.
Their meeting comes after coalition air strikes hit a prison in south-western Yemen on Sunday, killing 70 people loyal to the internationally recognised government, rebels said.
— AFP
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