TEHRAN – U.S. airstrike kills and injures scores of African migrants in Yemen, marking the latest civilian casualties in America’s aggression. 

According to Yemeni civil defense officials, the attack on the detention center in Saada province killed at least 68 African migrants and injured 47 others, with the death toll expected to rise. 

The attack is one of the deadliest so far in six weeks of intensified U.S. airstrikes. Local hospitals reported being overwhelmed with casualties following the strike.  

The Yemeni Interior Ministry confirmed the shelter housed 115 migrants of various African nationalities and was operating under the supervision of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Red Cross. 

In a strongly-worded statement, the ministry condemned the attack as “a full-fledged war crime” and a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law,” holding the U.S. government fully responsible for what it said was a “heinous crime against innocent civilians.”

The American administration had committed a “brutal crime” by bombing the Saada center, which held more than 100 undocumented African migrants, Ansarallah spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said in a social media post. 

The massacre follows a series of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, including four consecutive raids on a district in al-Jawf governorate earlier. 

The Yemeni Health Ministry also reported that 12 civilians, including two women and three children, were killed or wounded in a separate U.S. strike near the capital city of Sanaa two days ago.  

Local officials described the Saada attack as yet another example of what they called “American criminality and recklessness” in “support of the Zionist regime”. Rescue operations continued at the site as emergency workers struggled to retrieve victims from the rubble.  

The targeted shelter was reportedly being used as a holding center for African migrants attempting to travel through Yemen, many of whom were likely fleeing conflict or poverty in their home countries. 

Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly warned about the vulnerability of migrant populations in Yemen’s war zones.