The aid group, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, said Thursday it was withdrawing staff from six hospitals in northern Yemen after a coalition airstrike Monday on a hospital in the Houthi rebel-controlled area of Hajjah killed 19 people and wounded at least 24.
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MSF cited a “loss of confidence in the Saudi-led coalition to prevent fatal attacks”.
On Friday, the United States military said it had sharply reduced the number of its forces working with Saudi Arabia in the war on Yemen.
Meanwhile, Yemeni troops attacked the southern Saudi city of Najran again, firing more than 20 rockets at the army base there.
According to United States officials, the withdrawal that started in June, aims to reduce Washington’s involvement in the campaign that has been criticized for rising civilian casualties.
The coalition said it was committed to respecting worldwide humanitarian law in all its operations in Yemen and had set up an independent team to investigate incidents in which civilians are killed.
Government forces and the Saudi-led coalition also have fought against the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen (AQAP) and ISIS, both of which are anti-government Sunni terror groups. “In this regard, it announced it had established an “independent joint team of incident assessment” to ‘investigate reports of civilian casualties as a result of the action of the coalition and recommend changes in our operations where problems have occurred”.
Yemen’s minority Houthis, who are Shiite, rebelled previous year against the Sunni-led government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia. “The kingdom, however, denies such allegations and argues that it uses ‘highly accurate” munitions, guided by Global Positioning System and laser, and verifies its targets many times to avoid casualties among the population. “MSF asks the Saudi-led coalition and the governments supporting the coalition, particularly the US, UK and France, to ensure an immediate application of measures geared to substantially increasing the protection of civilians”.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in the violence.
That was the fourth and deadliest attack yet on an MSF facility during the war, the charity said.
The decision to establish the council was made by Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General People’s Congress party back in late July.
It called the demonstration “the most imposing in the history of Yemen” and said millions of people attended, a figure hard to verify independently.
Another air attack on Saturday hit what MSF described as a school in neighbouring Saada province, killing 10 children. Workers at the camp, about 20 km (13 miles) from the centre of Riyadh, said they had stopped work about four months ago and none had been paid since January.
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It is one of Saudi Arabia’s two most prominent construction companies, along with the Saudi Binladin Group.
