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Assault on Camp for Displaced Yemenis Is Said to Kill at Least 40 | |
(about 1 hour later) | |
International emergency relief groups reported what they described as a devastating air raid Monday on a northern Yemen camp housing thousands of displaced Yemenis, with dozens killed and wounded. It was not immediately clear who was responsible. | |
The International Organization for Migration, which had 25 field staff members at the camp, Al-Mazraq, said at least 40 people were killed, including three Yemeni government soldiers, and at least 200 wounded. Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity, also described the assault as an airstrike and said it had treated at least 34 of the wounded. | |
“People in Al-Mazraq camp have been living in very harsh conditions since 2009, and now they have suffered the consequences of an airstrike on the camp,” Pablo Marco, the Doctors Without Borders operational manager for Yemen, said in a statement. | |
News of the assault came on the fifth day of bombing runs by a Saudi-led coalition of warplanes from 10 allied nations seeking to stop fighters of the Iranian-backed Houthi movement, which has seized much of the impoverished country and threatened to plunge it into a protracted civil war. | News of the assault came on the fifth day of bombing runs by a Saudi-led coalition of warplanes from 10 allied nations seeking to stop fighters of the Iranian-backed Houthi movement, which has seized much of the impoverished country and threatened to plunge it into a protracted civil war. |
There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia on the Al-Mazraq assault. | |
But the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, which has largely been driven from power and is now cornered in the southern port of Aden, denied that any coalition airstrike had been carried out on the camp. | |
The Yemeni foreign minister, Riyadh Yaseen, was quoted by Reuters as telling reporters in Saudi Arabia that explosions at the camp had been caused by artillery strikes from Houthi fighters. | |
Joel A. Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based humanitarian group, said the number of wounded was likely to rise. | |
“We are trying to learn more about the victims, whether all are Yemeni, whether any are aid workers, and so on,” Mr. Millman said in an emailed statement. | “We are trying to learn more about the victims, whether all are Yemeni, whether any are aid workers, and so on,” Mr. Millman said in an emailed statement. |
Al-Mazraq, in Hajja Province, was established in 2001 by the United Nations and has housed hundreds of families whose lives have been upended by the country’s chronic conflicts. The camp currently houses about 5,000 people, Mr. Millman said. | |