TEHRAN – Saudi-led air strikes on a detention center in southwest Yemen on Sunday, which killed and wounded dozens of people, drew a strong rebuke from Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said the detention center in Dhamar bombarded by the coalition had been identified by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and that its representatives had visited the site several times.

“The bombardment of the detention center was the latest war crime committed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and (adds) another page to (the list of) crimes of the aggressors,” the spokesman said.

“These crimes are committed with weapons of the U.S. and some (other) Western countries… and the Yemeni people certainly hold these countries responsible for these crimes,” he added. 

Residents in Dhamar told news outlets that there had been six air strikes and that a complex in the city being used as a detention center had been hit.

According to media reports, Yemen’s Health Ministry spokesman said 60 bodies had been pulled from the rubble at the prison and that the number could rise. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the number of casualties.

“The explosions were strong and shook the city,” one resident said. “Afterwards ambulance sirens could be heard until dawn.”

Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for more than four years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Official UN figures say that more than 15,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began.

The Saudi war has impacted over seven million children in Yemen who now face a serious threat of famine, according to UNICEF figures. Over 6,000 children have either been killed or sustained serious injuries since 2015, UN children’s agency said. The humanitarian situation in the country has also been exacerbated by outbreaks of cholera, polio, and measles.

SP/PA