37 dead in bombing of factory in west Yemen — governor

Sana’a: At least 37 workers were killed when a dairy in western Yemen was bombed overnight, an official said on Wednesday after a seventh night of Saudi-led air strikes against Al Houthi rebels.

Eighty others were wounded at the plant in Hodaida, provincial governor Hasan Al Hai said, without specifying whether the factory was hit by an air strike or rebel shelling.

The head of the provincial health authorities, Abdul Rahman Jarallah, gave a slightly different toll, of 35 people killed and dozens wounded.

Part of the factory was destroyed and rescue teams were looking for survivors under the rubble, according to a medic at a Hodaida hospital, which received the dead and wounded.

The circumstances of the bombing were unclear, with some witnesses saying the dairy was hit by a coalition air strike and others blaming rebel forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The incident would appear to be one of the biggest cases of civilian deaths since the coalition began its air campaign on March 26.

The 26September website of Yemen’s factionalised army, which mostly sides with Al Houthis, said 37 workers were killed and 80 wounded at the factory “during the aggressive air strikes which targeted the two factories last night.” Medical sources in the city said 25 workers at the plant had been killed at the factory.

Residents and witnesses said the air strikes had targeted the factory shortly after midnight on Wednesday. Others said rockets fired from the base — possibly as retaliation against the bombings — hit the factory.

Air strikes overnight hit Al Houthi positions along the Saudi border in Yemen’s far North, an army bases in the central highlands, air defence infrastructure in the eastern Marib province, and a coast guard position near Hodaida.

After the weeklong campaign targeting Al Houthis and forces loyal to Saleh, the coalition has failed to secure Hadi’s control over his last remaining enclave in the southern port of Aden a key aim of the campaign.

The sound of gunfire and several large blasts were heard in Aden throughout the night. Videos posted online, whose authenticity could not immediately confirm, appeared to show fighting at an army base loyal to Saleh in the northeast of the city.

A raid at a coastal defence station at Maidi port in Hajja province north of Hodaida killed six soldiers, workers there said, while further strikes hit an army camp in Sanaa and a government facility in Saadeh in the north of Yemen.

In New York, UNICEF said late on Tuesday that at least 62 children had been killed and 30 wounded in fighting over the past week, and the United Nations said an attack on a refugee camp in northern Yemen, which medics blamed on an air strike, broke international law.

An Indian naval patrol boat picked up nearly 350 Indian nationals from the port of Aden on Tuesday night, and was expected to arrive in Djibouti during the day, a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs said.

More than 4,000 Indians — more than half of them nurses — are believed to have been in Yemen when Saudi Arabia launched air strikes last week.

Negotiations are under way to allow evacuation flights into Sanaa, where the Indian community is concentrated, and receive permission to evacuate more from Hodaida, the spokesman said.