UN says attack on Yemen camp broke law, calls for accountability

Mazraq camp was struck on Monday with 200 people wounded

An air strike that killed at least 40 people at a camp for displaced people in north Yemen was a violation of international law and those responsible should be held accountable, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The Mazraq camp for displaced people near Haradh was struck on Monday, humanitarian workers said. Some 200 people were wounded, dozens of them seriously, the International Organization for Migration said.

"We have not identified who is responsible for this attack," UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said. "Whichever forces are hitting them are in violation of the law, there should be accountability for that and ultimately all such attacks have to cease."

Read: 62 children killed in Yemen in past week: UNICEF

Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition of Arab states in a six-day-old air campaign against the Houthis, who emerged as the most powerful force in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country when they seized Yemen's capital last year.

A Saudi military spokesperson said on Monday the kingdom was seeking clarification on the incident.

Mazraq, in the province of Hajja next to the Saudi border, is a cluster of camps that are home to thousands of Yemenis displaced by over a decade of wars between the Houthis and the Yemeni state, as well as East African migrants.

"Whoever is responsible, this is a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law. This camp, as well as the hospitals that have also been hit, are under protected status and should not be hit," Haq said.

Haq said the United Nations has now withdrawn its remaining 13 international staff from Yemen, leaving several hundred local staff to continue the world body's work. There were about 100 international UN staff members in Yemen.

Read: Another PIA flight to bring stranded Pakistanis from Yemen

In response to calls by Yemen for an Arab ground intervention, Haq said: "We would be concerned about any further escalation of this conflict."

The UN Children's Fund, Unicef, said on Tuesday that at least 62 children have been killed and 30 injured during fighting in Yemen over the past week.

Separately, at least 37 workers were killed when a dairy in western Yemen was bombed overnight, an official said Wednesday after a seventh night of Saudi-led air strikes against Shiite rebels.

Eighty others were wounded at the plant in Hodeida, provincial governor Hasan al-Hai said, without specifying whether the factory was hit by an air strike or rebel shelling.The head of the provincial health authorities, Abdulrahman Jarallah, gave a slightly different toll of 35 people killed and dozens wounded.

Part of the factory was destroyed and rescue teams were looking for survivors under the rubble, according to a medic at a Hodeida hospital that received the dead and wounded.

The circumstances of the bombing were unclear, with some witnesses saying the dairy was hit by a coalition air strike and others blaming rebel forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.