At least 53 people have been killed in a Houthi ballistic missile attack on a training camp for Yemeni government security forces, making it the largest single loss of life since the country’s civil war reignited in September.
The attack on al-Alam camp in the southern Shabwa province was said to have injured more than 200 others, mostly young recruits, and was described as a disaster by the country’s UN-recognized government. The injured were taken from the police and army training camp in the Jardan district to a hospital in the local capital, Ataq, where pleas for blood donations were made.
There will be an inquiry into how so many troops were left so exposed to a Houthi attack. In mid-September, the group began a fresh push on forces backing the UN-recognized government by pushing south along the Red Sea coast to try to take control of the Bab al-Mandab waterway.
Reliable assessments of the death toll in the fighting over the last month are hard to gather, but it is running into the many thousands. A Saudi airstrike on Sunday killed nine, including five children and two women.
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