Yemen rebel prisoners among 11 dead in Saudi-led strikes

Saudi-led air strikes on a security complex in central Yemen controlled by Shiite rebels killed 11 people on Sunday, some of them prisoners, witnesses and medics said.

A first strike on the complex in Ibb province caused no casualties but a second strike hit as guards were evacuating some 300 detainees, the sources said.

Fifty people were wounded.

A Saudi-led coalition has conducted air strikes on rebel positions across Yemen since March and has provided training and heavy weapons to forces seeking to reinstate exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Raids on the rebel-held capital late on Friday killed 15 people, 10 of them civilians.

The rebels still control Sanaa, a year after they overran it with support from renegade troops still loyal to Hadi's ousted predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh.

But they have lost territory in the south since late July when the coalition began deploying ground troops in support of the exiled president's loyalists.  

The United Nations says nearly 4,900 people have been killed in Yemen since late March. The UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien has called the scale of suffering "almost incomprehensible."
Source: AFP