Suspected US airstrike hits Yemen migrant centre, Houthi TV says 68 killed

By Mohammed Ghobari and Nayera Abdallah

ADEN/DUBAI (Reuters) - Corpses covered in dust and debris were scattered in the wreckage of a detention centre for African migrants in Yemen, after what Houthi-controlled television described on Monday as a U.S. airstrike that killed 68 people.

The attack was one of the deadliest so far in six weeks of intensified U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis, an Iran-aligned group that controls northern Yemen and has struck shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is solidarity with the Palestinians.

The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a Reuters email requesting comment on the strike. The military has said it will not give detailed information about targets of its airstrikes for reasons of operational security.

Houthi-run Al Masirah television showed images of the aftermath of the strike in Saada, on a route used by African migrants to cross impoverished, conflict-riven Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia.

The footage showed bodies covered in dust amid blood-stained rubble. Rescue workers carried a man who was moving slightly on a stretcher. A survivor could be heard calling "My mother" in Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia.

Other survivors interviewed by Yemeni television in hospital described being woken by the dawn blast. "I was thrown into the air and fell to the ground," one said.

The American administration had committed a "brutal crime" by bombing the Saada detention centre which held more than 100 undocumented African migrants, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said on X.

The group vowed to continue its attacks on Red Sea shipping in a statement from its military spokesman Yahya Saree.

Reuters was able to verify the location and timing of the aftermath video through visible landmarks, such as a warehouse-like building with a shredded corrugated roof; satellite images of the same location the previous day had shown the roof intact.

The location matched that of a migrant centre that had also been hit in a previous Saudi-led airstrike in 2022.

The deadliest U.S. strike on Yemen so far came this month with an attack on a fuel terminal on the Red Sea that killed at least 74 people.

Rights advocates have raised concerns about civilian killings. Three Democratic senators wrote to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Thursday demanding an accounting for loss of civilian lives.

"Strikes pose a growing risk to the civilian population in Yemen," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Monday. "We continue to call on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians."

DANGEROUS ROUTE

Yemen has seen civil war for a decade between the Houthis and a government that controls the south, backed by Arab states, although fighting had eased for the past two years following a truce between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.

Hundreds of thousands of people seeking to escape poverty travel each year through the Horn of Africa and across the Red Sea to journey by foot through Yemen to the Saudi border, aid agency officials say.

More than 500 people drowned crossing the Red Sea last year as they tried to reach Yemen, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency.

The Yemeni-Saudi border, which stretches west to east across a humid coastal plain, rugged scrub-covered mountains and high desert dunes, was an active frontline in the war for years and remained dangerous even after the truce paused major fighting.

Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that Saudi border guards had used explosive weapons and gunfire to kill hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, including women and children, trying to cross the border. A Saudi official rejected that report.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has tried for years to reduce the number of undocumented migrants entering and working there, often in low-paid jobs. U.N. studies have shown it is home to an estimated 750,000 Ethiopians.

(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah and Tala Ramadan in Dubai, Mohammed Ghobari in Aden, Andrew Mills in Doha, Tiffany Le in Beijing and Dawit Endeshaw in Addis Ababa; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Peter Graff, Andrew Heavens and Mark Potter)