9 POWs killed as Saudi forces bomb a detention center in Al-Hazm, Yemen

Yemen’s Houthi movement said on Tuesday that a Saudi airstrike targeted a prison in the northern city of Al-Hazm in Al-Jawf province overnight, killing nine detainees who had been captured in recent fighting.

Abdelkader al-Murtada, head of the Houthis’ National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, stated that Saudi forces struck a facility holding a number of prisoners of war in Al-Hazm late Monday night. He said the nine men killed were among those captured during recent events and that their names would be released later.

The Houthi-run National Human Rights Authority condemned the reported attack as a “heinous crime,” describing the bombing of a prison holding prisoners of war as a war crime under Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. The statement was carried by the Houthi-affiliated Saba news agency.

Multiple international outlets, including reports citing AFP and Xinhua, relayed the Houthi claims. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia.

The reported incident comes amid a sharp escalation in fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed forces. Al-Jawf province, which borders Saudi Arabia, has seen intensified clashes and airstrikes in recent weeks. A separate Houthi claim earlier in September accused Saudi aircraft of striking the Central Corrective Facility in the same city, with casualty figures that rose in subsequent Houthi reports.

Yemen’s long-running conflict began in 2014 when Houthi forces seized the capital Sanaa. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 in support of the internationally recognized government. A fragile de facto truce that largely held after 2022 has broken down in recent months, with both sides conducting cross-border attacks and ground operations.