Three missiles on recruits in formation

A Houthi attack on al-Alam camp, a police and army training facility in the Jardan district of southern Shabwa province, killed at least 53 people - the largest single loss of life since the civil war reignited in September. Three ballistic missiles hit the site while recruits stood lined up in formation, and more than 200 people were wounded, most of them young recruits.

• The wounded were taken to a hospital in Ataq, the provincial capital, where blood donations were requested.
• Houthi forces have also cut the road between government-run Shabwa and the Houthi-run Bayda governorate.
• Shabwa's governor, Awad bin al-Wazir, visited the wounded in hospitals and called for extra air defences, saying troops were fighting across six fronts.

Government and Houthi accounts clash

The two sides described the target in sharply different terms. A Yemen government spokesperson said the site was not a military target tied to the current fighting but 'a training centre where new recruits in the internal security forces of Shabwa governorate receive training and qualification programmes'. The spokesperson added: 'This reveals the criminal nature of this assault, which targeted young people in the preparation and qualification phase to carry out their security duties, far from the frontlines.'

The Houthi military spokesperson said: 'Our armed forces targeted the Saudi enemy's mobilisations in al-Alam camp, which is run by Saudi officers in the eastern regions.' The group claimed the strikes left dozens dead and wounded among what it called the 'Saudi enemy's mobilisations', including Saudi officers.

The spokesperson also warned 'the deceived ones against responding to the Saudi enemy's calls to lure them with his defiled money to the pyres of death'.

Al-Alimi vows response and UN action

President Rashad al-Alimi, head of the UN-recognised government, said those killed on Monday were new recruits, and he vowed an immediate hard response. In his words, the incident 'affirmed that targeting the recruits reflects the Houthi militias' approach of resorting to cowardly terrorist attacks' at moments when the group is under pressure or its Iranian-backed sabotage efforts stall.

On Monday, al-Alimi telephoned António Guterres, the UN secretary general, with a request: that the world body move to have the Houthis designated a foreign terrorist organisation.

Officials in Shabwa also condemned the strike. 'Targeting recruits constitutes a military escalation and a blatant assault on the province's security,' the provincial authority said in its statement.

Wider war and the inquiry

The strike followed the offensive the Houthis opened in mid-September, a fresh push south along the Red Sea coast to try to take control of the Bab al-Mandab waterway. Reliable assessments are hard to gather, but deaths across the past month of fighting are running into the many thousands. A Saudi airstrike on Sunday killed nine people, including five children and two women.

• The Houthis separately claimed six strikes against the anti-Houthi Giant Brigades in the areas of al-Suqya and Ras al-Ara.
• Southern forces are said to be making progress edging Houthi forces out of the area around the Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrowest waterway between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
• Fighting also continues as the Houthis try to mount a siege of Taiz, where conditions are deteriorating as access points close and citizens call for greater air protection.

The attack has fallout beyond Yemen. The Saudi Aramco headquarters was struck last weekend, and some airlines will not yet resume using Riyadh airport, which reopened at the weekend after an attack this month.

Egypt's parliament postponed a vote on whether to send troops to Saudi Arabia, extending the debate to a second day as MPs demanded more than two minutes each to speak; the vote is likely next week. A two-thirds majority is required, and some opposition parties have signalled they will vote against or abstain. The disputes centre on the extent of the mission, whether it would involve sending troops into Yemen to help Saudi Arabia, and whether Egyptian troops in Saudi Arabia would become Houthi targets.

Egypt last intervened in Yemen in the 1962-67 war, when Gamal Abdel Nasser sent troops backing republicans in North Yemen against Saudi- and British-backed royalists - a force that grew to as many as 70,000 soldiers, with estimates of Egyptian killed ranging from 10,000-26,000.

An inquiry will examine how so many troops were left so exposed to the attack.