Doctors Without Borders is withdrawing from northern Yemen due to what it calls “indiscriminate bombings and unreliable reassurances” from the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Shi’ite rebels in the country.
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The global aid group said in a statement on Thursday that an attack this week on a hospital it supported in the area had killed 19 people and wounded 24.
The hospital strike was the latest in a series of coalition raids that have hit civilian facilities – including a school in the rebel stronghold of Saada on Saturday where 10 children were killed and a food processing plant in the capital Saana, a city with widespread hunger.
The charity said it condemned the way “all involved actors”, including the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels, were conducting the war.
“Coalition officials repeatedly state that they honor the worldwide humanitarian law, yet this attack shows a failure to control the use of force and to avoid attacks on hospitals full of patients”, it said. “MSF is neither satisfied nor reassured by the SLC’s statement that this attack was a mistake”. The so-called Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen said in its statement that, “we are seeking urgent discussions with MSF to understand how we can work together to resolve this situation, ‘ which have been caused by recent air strikes against civilian facilities”.
“Coalition officials repeatedly state that they honor worldwide humanitarian law, yet this attack shows a failure to control the use of force and to avoid attacks on hospitals full of patients”, it said.
“[It] asserts its appreciation for the work the group is undertaking with the Yemeni people in these hard circumstances”, the statement continued.
Yemen in many ways has become a proxy battleground for Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Yemen’s minority Houthis, who are Shiite, rebelled a year ago against the Sunni-led government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in the violence. The United Nations estimates 9,000 casualties, including over 3,200 civilian deaths in the Yemeni conflict from March 2015 to March 2016.
MSF is one of handful of global medical aid groups operating on the ground in Yemen where a 16-month civil war between a Gulf Arab coalition and an Iran-allied militia has killed over 6,500 people and brought one of world’s poorest countries close to starvation.
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The hospitals will continue to be manned by local workers and volunteers, MSF said.
