Yemen just suffered its deadliest attack in months and the toll is still climbing

Three Houthi ballistic missiles have killed at least 73 people at a Yemeni government training camp.

It's the deadliest single attack since fighting restarted three months ago.

So what happened? The missiles hit the al-Alam training camp during dawn training, three days ago. The camp sits in Jardan district, Shabwa province, north of the provincial capital, Ataq, on the supply road to government-held Marib.

More than 200 people were wounded. 14 are still missing.

And almost all of the dead were new recruits. Aged 18 to 20.

Now the death toll. It has moved fast, and it hasn't stopped moving.

On the day itself, government and medical accounts said at least 18 were killed. By the next evening, that was 53. Two days ago, Awad Ibn al-Wazir, the governor of Shabwa, gave the Associated Press the current figure. At least 73.

Nobody has explained that jump.

Nasser Sheikh Bahaj was there. He's a recruit, and he was injured in the strike. He says quote "suddenly we heard a loud explosion and shrapnel flew everywhere".

That's a teenager describing dawn prayers and breakfast turning into a missile strike in seconds.

The governor has already rejected any military reason for hitting the camp. He says quote "this had nothing to do with frontlines".

So that's the provincial governor saying this camp was never a target worth hitting.

The Houthis disagree. They say they carried out the attack. Their military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, listed it on social media among six operations over two days. The Houthis call the camp a Saudi-backed facility, and say Saudi troops were among the dead.

They haven't offered any evidence for that. And nobody else has confirmed it.

Here's another detail nobody's fully explained. At least 15 of the dead came from a single Yemeni tribe, according to a government official. Some reports name the tribes as the Awlaqi and the Maraziq. The Associated Press account only confirms the single-tribe detail, not the names.