The group, also known by its French acronym MSF, said it made the decision after Monday’s attack on Abs Hospital in Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate that killed 19 people, including one MSF staff member. Two patients died while being transferred to Al Jamhouri hospital.
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The coalition warplanes fighting Shia Houthi rebels to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government, conducted 95 air strikes across Yemen, Xinhua news agency reported.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Teresa Sancristoval, the MSF emergency program manager for Yemen, claimed that once again civil wars did not distinguish medical environments and urged all parties to cease attacks on health care institutions.
“Aerial bombings have, however, continued, despite the fact that MSF has systematically shared the Global Positioning System coordinates of hospitals in which we work with the parties involved in the conflict”, the organization said.
“Coalition officials repeatedly state that they honor global humanitarian law, yet this attack shows a failure to control the use of force and to avoid attacks on hospitals full of patients”, the group said.
The conflict has killed at over 6,500 people and unleashed a humanitarian crisis in one of the world’s poorest countries.
The hospital strike was the latest in a series of reported coalition raids hitting civilian facilities – including at a school on Saturday that killed 10 children.
The aid agency said the children ranged in ages from 8 – 15, but without specifying which group was behind the airstrike.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S., has been bombing Yemen since March 2015, in a bid to reinstate the president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and counter advances by Houthi rebels.
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. “The circumstances of this attack must be thoroughly and independently investigated”.
“Today’s air strike appears to be the latest in a string of unlawful attacks targeting hospitals highlighting an alarming pattern of disregard for civilian life”, Amnesty’s deputy director Magdalena Mughrabi said, demanding an investigation.
Saudi Arabian media said Saturday that a senior Houthi leader was killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in Saada.
An eyewitness told Xinhua that the airstrike destroyed a part of the hospital, but the hospital is still being operated by the MSF doctors.
The group said in May that at least 100 staff members, patients and caretakers were killed, and another 130 were wounded, in aerial bombing and shelling attacks on more than 80 MSF-supported and run health structures in 2015 and early 2016.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon condemned the strike, saying he was “deeply disturbed” by the intensification of air raids in Yemen.
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It is also, as pointed out by Sancristóval, not the first time an MSF facility has been targeted.
