More than 50 security personnel have been killed and about 200 injured in a Houthi missile strike on a training camp in Yemen’s central Shabwa province, according to local authorities, in one of the deadliest attacks since the country’s civil war flared again this year.
A spokesman for the Saudi-backed Yemeni armed forces said the Iran-backed Houthi movement fired three ballistic missiles at al-Alam camp near the city of Ataq on Monday. The site was being used to train recruits for the internal security forces and police.
Shabwa’s provincial media office said the missiles struck the Martyr Ahmed al-Sulaimani Training Centre, where recruits from several provinces were undergoing training. A preliminary assessment put the death toll at 53, with more than 200 wounded. Video shared on social media appeared to show several bodies lying on the ground.
Hospitals overwhelmed
Shabwa’s deputy governor, Fahad al-Khalifi, told the AFP news agency that hospitals in the province had been overwhelmed. The most seriously wounded were being transferred to neighbouring Hadramout and to Aden, where the government is based, and some were in a critical condition, he said.
Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, condemned what he called a “criminal attack” and promised a “firm response”. Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani said the strike amounted to a war crime because the training centre was not a military target. He accused the Houthis of trying to manufacture a media victory to cover setbacks on the battlefield.
The Houthis gave a different account. Their military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said the missiles had targeted a gathering of “Saudi enemy” forces at al-Alam camp, which he said was run by Saudi officers. The competing claims could not be independently verified.
Strikes on both sides
Houthi-run media reported a separate Saudi air strike on a home in the Sahar district of Saada province, in the Houthi-controlled north, which it said killed at least 10 people and injured 23 on Sunday, many of them women and children. The Houthi-run health ministry says 141 people have been killed in Saudi strikes over the past seven weeks.
The internationally recognised government’s health ministry said last week that at least 1,282 people had been killed in the conflict across Yemen since 6 August. In Saudi Arabia, at least 19 people have been killed in Houthi attacks on the kingdom’s airports since the start of October.
An unravelling ceasefire
Yemen’s war began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from the capital, Sanaa. It escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition intervened to try to restore the government. An informal ceasefire held for about four years, but it began to collapse in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and launched missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.
The Houthis say they are responding to what they describe as a Saudi blockade of territory under their control and to an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blame on the kingdom.
At the start of October, pro-government forces launched a major offensive aimed at retaking territory in western Yemen. With air support from the Saudi-led coalition, they regained ground on the Red Sea coast overlooking the strategically important Bab al-Mandab Strait, which the Houthis had captured in a surprise assault in September.
Heavy fighting has continued there, around the besieged government-held city of Taiz, and further north in Marib and al-Jawf provinces. The Houthis have responded to Saudi air strikes by targeting airports, energy facilities and military bases in Saudi Arabia.
Fears for civilians and shipping
Shabwa, an oil-producing province in central Yemen, had been relatively distant from the main front lines. Monday’s attack shows the reach of the Houthis’ missile arsenal and raises fears that the conflict could spread further into government-held areas.
The renewed fighting has also heightened concern about shipping through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the world’s busiest maritime chokepoints, and about a humanitarian situation that aid agencies have long described as among the worst in the world.
Neither side has signalled any willingness to return to talks. With the government promising retaliation and the Houthis continuing to strike targets in Saudi Arabia, Yemen faces the prospect of a wider and more destructive phase of a war already more than a decade old.
