Saudi Air Force deadly air strikes in Yemen
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ADEN (APP): Saudi-led coalition air strikes on rebel-held security buildings in western Yemen have killed at least 60 people, many of them inmates buried under the rubble of a detention centre.
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The strikes late Saturday came just hours after other coalition raids hit three residential buildings in the southwest, killing 17 civilians.
The Huthi rebels on Sunday said a new UN peace plan aimed at ending the country's 19-month-old war was a "basis for discussion" despite "fundamental flaws".
Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi on Saturday, however, rejected the proposal aimed at ending fighting between forces loyal to his government and the rebels and their allies.
The war escalated in March 2015 when the coalition launched a military campaign to push back the rebels, after they seized the capital in 2014 and then advanced on other parts of Yemen including the province of Hodeidah.
In the latest deadly strikes in Hodeidah, which the rebels have controlled since late 2014, coalition warplanes hit a rebel-held security compound in the town of Zaidia.
"Sixty people in total were killed and dozens were wounded," a health official said.
Most of the victims were anti-rebel detainees who were being held among 100 inmates in two cells at the detention centre, he said.
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It remains unclear why the coalition would hit a detention centre holding anti-rebel inmates.
Footage from the site showed the bloodied limbs and bodies of the victims covered in dust and buried under the rubble as sirens wailed nearby.
"We were about to go to sleep when an air strike targeted us," said one wounded man at a hospital in the area.
"We ran away and a second air strike hit us again," he said, as medics rushed around bringing in wounded victims covered in blood.
The rebel-controlled sabanews.net also gave a toll of 60 killed and 38 wounded, adding that "dead bodies are still being retrieved" from under the rubble.
Coalition warplanes over the area "are hampering attempts to save the victims and retrieve bodies", sabanews.net reported.
"The number of victims could rise further due to the lack of medical supplies," it said, quoting a medical source who blamed the coalition's "blockade".
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A lack of ambulances "has made attempts to transfer critical cases to hospitals in the city of Hodeidah more difficult", the source said.
International aid groups have repeatedly voiced concern over the rising need for aid in Yemen, where malnutrition has increased in the past few months.
Elsewhere on Saturday, strikes killed 17 civilians and completely destroyed three residential buildings in a town southeast of third city Taez, sabanews.net said.
A local official loyal to Hadi's government said the air strikes in the town of Salo had hit three adjacent homes by mistake.
But the coalition -- which has come under pressure over the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign -- has so far not commented on either of the attacks.
The conflict has killed nearly 7,000 people, mostly civilians, since March 2015, according to the United Nations, which has been struggling to convince the warring parties to implement a ceasefire and revive a stalled political process.
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The rebels -- who are allied with troops who have remained loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh -- on Sunday said the latest UN peace plan was a "basis for discussion" despite "fundamental flaws".
They said the plan by UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed did not include a "total, permanent ceasefire" or foresee lifting the blockade against areas they control.
The contents of the roadmap, which Hadi rejected on Saturday, have not been made public.
But informed sources say it calls for agreement on naming a new vice president after the rebels withdraw from Sanaa and other cities and hand over heavy weapons to a third party.
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Hadi would then transfer power to the vice president who would appoint a new prime minister to form a government in which the north and south of Yemen would have equal representation.
The president has slammed the UN proposal as one that "rewards the putschists while punishing the Yemeni people and legitimacy".
