'More than 100 killed' in Saudi coalition strike on Yemen prison

"We estimate over 100 people were killed," Franz Rauchenstein, head of delegation for the ICRC in Yemen, told AFP after he travelled to the city of Dhamar where the air strikes hit.

He said that at least 40 survivors were being treated for their injuries in hospitals in the city, which lies south of the capital Sanaa.

The Saudi-led military coalition said earlier that it launched air strikes against a Houthi military target that "stores drones and missiles".

However, the Houthi television channel Al-Masirah said that "dozens were killed and injured" in seven air strikes that hit a building the rebels used as a prison.

The ICRC has sent medical teams and hundreds of body bags to Dhamar, saying that it had visited detainees at the location before.

"As we speak, the teams are working relentlessly to find survivors under the rubble" and are "currently collecting bodies," Rauchenstein said, adding that the chances of finding anyone else alive in the heavy debris "are very low".

The Saudi-led military coalition intervened in support of the Yemeni government in 2015 after the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and closed in on the government's temporary base of Aden.

Since then, the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, relief agencies say.

The conflict has triggered what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with much of the country on the brink of famine.

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