Members of a Saudi-led coalition will conduct an “independent” probe into allegations that air strikes killed children at a Yemen school, investigators said on Monday.
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The Saudi-led coalition bombing rebels in Yemen launched an investigation Tuesday following worldwide condemnation of an air strike that Doctors Without Borders said killed 11 people at a hospital it supports.
Ayman Mazkour, who heads the health sector in Hajja province, said six people were killed and 20 wounded in the aerial attack, warning that the death toll could rise.
In Washington, the State Department said it was “deeply concerned by a reported airstrike” and called on “all parties to cease hostilities immediately”, but did not specifically point to the Saudi-led coalition.
Another 19 people were injured in the attack in Abs, in Hajjah province, believed to have been carried out by the Saudi-led coalition which is backing Yemen’s government in its fight against Houthi rebels.
It expressed outrage at what it described as “the fourth attack against an MSF facility in less than 12 months”.
Abs hospital, supported by MSF since July 2015, has been partially destroyed, and all the remaining patients and staff have been evacuated. The conflict has seen more than 6,400 people killed, half of them civilians, and displaced 2.5m citizens, according to the United Nations (UN).
The air campaign, carried out without any worldwide mandate, has killed almost 10,000 people, a lot of them civilians, according to pro-Houthi sources.
“Deliberately targeting medical facilities is a serious violation of worldwide humanitarian law which would amount to a war crime”, said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.
A U.S. aerial attack on an MSF-run hospital in Afghanistan last October killed 42 people.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last September called for a halt to the coalition’s air campaign, saying it was responsible for most of the conflict’s civilian casualties.
The Houthis have also been accused of attacking such civilian facilities.
Coalition spokesman General Ahmed Assiri denied targeting a school, instead accusing Houthi clan supporters of de-facto president Ali Abdullah Saleh of using “children as recruits”.
The team has already investigated claims of attacks on a residential area, hospitals, markets, a wedding and World Food Programme (WFP) aid trucks.
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The attack outside the capital hit the home of a local leader of Yemen’s armed Houthi group while he was out, killing his father and eight members of the family, residents added.
