The Huthi rebels released gruesome video footage showing bodies in the rubble and mangled corpses from the attack, which levelled buildings at the prison in their northern heartland of Saada.

The Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting the rebels since 2015, released a statement on Saturday denying it carried out the strike.

Reports of the targeting of the rebel-held facility are “baseless and unfounded”, said coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki, who was quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The coalition official said the prison was not placed on a “No Strike List in accordance with the agreed upon mechanism” with the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office in Yemen and had “not been reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross”.

Al-Malki said the coalition would share with both agencies “the facts and details, as well as the media misinformation” by the Huthis about the facility.

Further south in the port city of Hodeida, at least three children died when airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition hit a telecommunications facility as they played nearby, Save the Children said. Yemen also suffered a country-wide internet blackout.

“The children were reportedly playing on a nearby football field when missiles struck,” Save the Children said.

Eight aid agencies operating in Yemen said in a joint statement they were “horrified by the news that more than 70 people, including migrants, women and children, have been killed… in a blatant disregard for civilian lives”.

They said the prison in Saada was used as a holding centre for migrants, who made up many of the casualties.

The strikes came after the Huthis took the seven-year war into a new phase by claiming a drone and missile attack on Abu Dhabi that killed three people on Monday.

They came as the UN Security Council met to discuss that attack at the UAE’s request.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement Friday called for “all parties to the conflict to de-escalate” and “abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law” after the Yemen strike and the attack on the Emirati capital

The United Arab Emirates insisted that it and other coalition members remained committed to “proportionate” responses to Huthi attacks.

“The coalition undertakes to abide by international law and proportionate response in all its military operations,” UAE ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh said.

The Security Council unanimously condemned the “heinous terrorist attacks” by the Yemeni rebels, but in a statement before the meeting the council’s Norwegian presidency also strongly condemned the latest violence.

In a later statement, the UN said Guterres “reminds all parties that attacks directed against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited by international humanitarian law.”

Aid workers said hospitals in Saada were overwhelmed after the prison attack, with one receiving 70 dead and 138 wounded, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Two other hospitals have received “many wounded” and as night fell, the rubble was still being searched, the aid agency said.

Ahmed Mahat, Doctors Without Borders’ head of mission in Yemen, said: “There are many bodies still at the scene of the air strike, many missing people.”

“It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It seems to have been a horrific act of violence.”

The coalition claimed the attack in Hodeida, a lifeline port for the shattered country, but did not say it had carried out any strikes on Saada.

Global internet watchdog NetBlocks reported a “nation-scale collapse of internet connectivity”

AFP correspondents in Hodeida and Sanaa confirmed the outage.

Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the Huthis descended from their base in Saada to overrun the capital Sanaa, prompting Saudi-led forces to intervene to prop up the government the following year.

Tensions have soared in recent weeks after the UAE-backed Giants Brigade drove the rebels out of Shabwa province, undermining their months-long campaign to take the key city of Marib further north

On January 3, the Huthis hijacked a United Arab Emirates-flagged ship in the Red Sea

And on Monday, they claimed a long-range attack that struck oil facilities and the airport in Abu Dhabi, killing two Indians and a Pakistani, and wounding six other people.

The attack was the first deadly assault acknowledged by the UAE inside its borders and claimed by the Huthis.

In retaliation, the coalition carried out air strikes against rebel-held Sanaa that killed 14 people.

Yemen’s civil war has been a catastrophe for millions of its citizens who have fled their homes, with many close to famine in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The free web-based encyclopedia project which contains information on a wide variety of subjects described a failed state as a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.

It further added that a state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly. For a stable state, it is necessary for the government to enjoy both effectiveness and legitimacy. Likewise, when a nation weakens and it’s standard of living declines, it introduces the possibility of total governmental collapse.

Some countries listed as a failed state include; Syria, Somalia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Liberia, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 189 countries, that helps foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and reduce poverty around the world.

The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, in a statement in Washington last night, announced debt service relief for 25 poor countries saying the debt relief was to enable the affected countries to better tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

The countries that were relieved of the debt include Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, D.R., The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Tajikistan, Togo and Yemen.

She said, ” Today, I am pleased to say that our Executive Board approved immediate debt service relief to 25 of the IMF’s member countries under the IMF’s revamped Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) as part of the Fund’s response to help address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This provides grants to our poorest and most vulnerable members to cover their IMF debt obligations for an initial phase over the next six months and will help them channel more of their scarce financial resources towards vital emergency medical and other relief efforts. The CCRT can currently provide about US$500 million in grant-based debt service relief, including the recent US$185 million pledge by the UK and US$100 million provided by Japan as immediately available resources. Others, including China and the Netherlands, are also stepping forward with important contributions. I urge other donors to help us replenish the Trust’s resources and boost further our ability to provide additional debt service relief for a full two years to our poorest member countries.”

But in August, separatists supported by the UAE seized control the city of Aden from Saudi-backed government forces.

The UN said the deal was an important step towards ending Yemen’s civil war.

The conflict has devastated the country and claimed the lives of at least 7,000 civilians, according to the UN.

Monitors believe the death toll is far higher. The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) said last week that it had recorded more than 100,000 fatalities , including 12,000 civilians killed in direct attacks.

The fighting has also triggered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Four-fifths of the population – 24 million people – are in need of humanitarian assistance or protection, including 10 million who rely on food aid to survive.

An inter-agency discussion about imposing travel restrictions on countries that are not compliant with electronic documents and information sharing — a key focus of the administration — is underway, according to a senior administration official. Fewer than five countries are under consideration, the official said.

The goal, the official said, is to “bring governments into compliance by using the power of access to the United States.” The travel restrictions would be tailored to the countries, if they’re added, and not impose a ban on them altogether, the official noted.

The administration has argued that the travel ban is vital to national security and ensures countries are in compliance with security measures. But critics say the restrictions imposed by President Donald Trump’s executive order are an attempt to ban Muslims from entering the United States. It’s unclear which countries are currently under consideration and if they are majority Muslim.

In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the third version of the travel ban after previous bans ricocheted through the courts. The ban restricts entry from seven countries to varying degrees: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, along with Venezuela and North Korea. Chad was removed from the list last April, after the White House said the country improved security measures.

The third iteration of the travel ban directs the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with other federal agencies, to assess the list of countries on an ongoing basis and provide a report to the President.