At least 53 people have been killed in a Houthi ballistic missile attack on a training camp for Yemeni government forces in the largest single loss of life since the country’s civil war reignited in September.
The attack on the al-Alam camp in Shabwa province, southern Yemen, was said to have injured more than 200 others, mostly young recruits, and described as a disaster by the country’s UN-recognised government. The injured were taken from the police and army training camp in the Jardan district to a hospital in the local capital, Ataq, where pleas for blood donations were made.
There will be an inquiry into how so many troops were left so exposed to Houthi attacks. In mid-September, the group began a fresh push on forces backing the UN-recognised government by pushing south along the Red Sea coast to attempt to take control of the Bab al-Mandab waterway.
Reliable assessments of the death toll in the fighting over the last month are hard to gather, but it is running into the many thousands. A Saudi airstrike on Sunday killed nine, including five children and two women.
Rashad al-Alimi, the president of the UN-recognised government, said those killed on Monday were new recruits, and he vowed an immediate hard response. He said the incident “affirmed that targeting the recruits reflects the Houthi militias’ approach of resorting to cowardly terrorist attacks whenever they face pressures or their Iranian-backed sabotage plots falter”.
He had already on Monday phoned the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to ask for the UN to classify the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The Shabwa provincial authority said: “Targeting recruits constitutes a military escalation and a blatant assault on the province’s security.” Its governor, Awad bin Al-Wazir, visited the wounded in hospitals.
The killings underline the dangers of large numbers of troops gathering in one place within reach of the Houthi ballistic missile arsenal. The training camp was struck by three ballistic missiles while the recruits lined up in formation.
Houthi forces have also cut the road between government-run Shabwa and the Houthi-run Bayda governorate.
The Houthi military spokesperson said: “Our armed forces targeted the Saudi enemy’s mobilisations in the Al-Alam camp, which is run by Saudi officers in the eastern regions. The targeting resulted in the fall of dozens of dead and wounded from the Saudi enemy’s mobilizations, including Saudi officers.
“We warn the deceived ones against responding to the Saudi enemy’s calls to lure them with his defiled money to the pyres of death, and to exploit them instead of his soldiers who are indifferent to their lives.”
Fighting is also under way as Houthis try to mount a siege of the Yemeni city Taiz, and citizens have been calling for greater air protection.
Southern forces were said to be making progress in edging Houthi forces out of control of the area around the Bab al-Mandab, the narrowest waterway taking ships from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
It is not clear whether the Houthis have decided to slow the pace of attacks on Saudi airports and energy installations, or they are running low on munitions.
The Saudi Armaco headquarters was struck last weekend and some airlines have said they are not yet going to resume using Riyadh airport. The airport formally reopened at the weekend after being attacked this month.
Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy for Yemen, is due in London to meet ministers on Tuesday.
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