Date: Apr 24, 2018 Source: The Daily Star Yemen Houthi political leader killed in air raid ADEN/SANAA: The political leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Saleh al-Sammad, was killed last week in an airstrike by the Arab-led coalition, the Iran-allied rebels said Monday. Sammad, head of the Houthis’ supreme political council, was “martyred” in the eastern province of Hudaida Thursday, the rebels said in a statement published on the Houthi-run Saba news agency. His death comes as a big blow to the Houthi rebels who since March 2015 have been fighting pro-government forces backed by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia. At the beginning of April, Sammad dubbed 2018 “the year of ballistic excellence,” referring to missiles the rebels have fired across the border. The Houthis’ supreme leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi rarely appears in public. Yemen’s Houthis Monday fired two ballistic missiles at a Saudi Aramco facility in the southern city of Jizan, but Saudi state media said the rockets were destroyed. Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV said they had targeted a port belonging to the Saudi state oil giant, but there were no reports of damage or casualties, and no immediate comment from Aramco. Meanwhile, five pro-government soldiers were killed and 19 wounded in clashes with militants in Yemen’s southern city of Taiz Monday after the killing of an aid worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross, medics said. It was unknown if there were any casualties among the militants. Fighting in the city’s Jahmaliah district came after the governor of Taiz launched an operation against extremists he suspected were behind the murder of the ICRC employee over the weekend. Jahmaliah is controlled by pro-government forces but there is an extremist presence in the area, a police officer told AFP. A large portion of Yemen’s third city Taiz is held by pro-government fighters, but the entrances to the city are controlled by Houthi rebels. Fierce clashes broke out after the operation was launched Monday morning, according to the officer, who was unable to provide further details. On Sunday, Taiz governor Amin Ahmad Mahmud, loyal to Yemeni President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi, created a special force of police and army units tasked with battling militants he believes killed the ICRC employee Saturday. The Lebanese aid worker, Hanna Lahoud, was shot in Taiz by unidentified assailants. The rebels who control most of northern Yemen blamed Sunday’s attack on an Arab coalition, in the latest in a string of such incidents. Also Monday, dozens were killed and wounded in an air raid on a wedding party in Yemen, local officials said, with Houthi rebels again blaming the Arab-led military coalition. Medical sources and local officials put the number of dead between 22 and 33, with at least 40 to 50 wounded, while the exact circumstances of the raid remained unclear. Rescue teams said the wedding was being held in the Houthi-controlled Bani Qais area of Al-Hajjah province, north of Sanaa, when jets carried out the raid. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Twitter that a hospital it supports in Al-Hajjah received at least 45 patients, including 13 children, wounded in the airstrikes, which it said were “among the most devastating in the area in recent months.” A local official told AFP that at least 23 civilians, including women and children, were killed and 36 others wounded in the attack. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a double airstrike on the crowded party venue had left a number of dead bodies buried beneath the rubble. Al-Masirah television said at least 33 people, including women and children, were killed and as many as 55 people wounded. The Arab-led coalition’s spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran, which is accused of supplying arms to the Houthis, swiftly condemned the raid. “The escalated bombardment of residential areas proves the desperation and inability of the invaders in achieving their goals,” foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said in a statement. It was not the first deadly strike on a wedding during Yemen’s conflict, which has killed nearly 10,000 people and wounded 54,000 others since the coalition intervened in March 2015 to battle the Houthi rebels and restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government to power. In late 2015, coalition airstrikes on two wedding parties in northern Yemen killed at least 159 civilians. Separately in the south of the country, dozens of prisoners at a detention center in southern Yemen controlled by the United Arab Emirates said they have started a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detentions without charges or trials. About 100 prisoners in the Beir Ahmed prison in the southern city of Aden said in a statement leaked to the media that their open-ended strike would continue until their demands are met. They said Aden prosecutors have ordered more than 70 detainees released but the prison’s Emirati commanders refuse to let them go. A Yemeni security official, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations, said the government has no control over the prison or the power to release the detainees. “It’s all in the hands of the Emiratis,” he said. The detainees, before they were transferred to Beir Ahmed, were among hundreds rounded up on terror charges and held in secret UAE-run detention centers in southern Yemen where prisoners were reportedly tortured. The UAE has denied the allegations. Earlier this year, Hadi’s government complained in a letter to the U.N. Security Council that it has no control over the detention centers in southern Yemen or over the newly-formed, UAE-backed security forces established there.