Health officials in Sanaa confirmed that 17 bodies had been taken to local hospitals after the airstrikes on a village in Nehem District, northeast of the capital, the New York Times reported Tuesday, while Reuters said earlier in the day that at least nine people had been killed.
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A Doctors Without Borders staffer was among the dead, it added.
Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, Oxfam Yemen country director, said: “This was a horrific attack killing sick and injured people and the medical staff desperately trying to help them”.
“This is the fourth attack against an MSF facility in less than 12 months”, the statement said.
The facility has been providing a range of services and medical aid for internally displaced people, along with emergency and maternal health care and surgery, the group said on its website.
The strike, in which a member of MSF staff was also killed, was the latest in an increasing number of attacks targeting places commonly used by civilians, including hospitals where MSF doctors and nurses work.
MSF said the hospital’s Global Positioning System coordinates had been shared with all sides to the conflict, including the Saudi-led coalition. It blamed the strike on a Saudi-led coalition.
More than 6,500 people have been killed, over half of them civilians, since the Saudi-led coalition began its assault on Yemen in March 2015.
The coalition said the bombing had targeted a training facility run by Yemen’s rebel Houthi group.
One of the fatalities was an MSF electrician, while a doctor and a nurse who were both severely injured also worked for the charity, Sancristoval told Agence France-Presse by phone from Barcelona, Spain. “Whether intentional or a result of a negligence, this is unacceptable”.
The coalition assessment team has opened an investigation into these reports as a matter of urgency and is seeking additional information, in particular from Medecins Sans Frontieres, the statement said.
Rights groups and United Nations agencies say that more than 9,000 people have been killed since the Yemen war escalated with the Saudi-led airstrikes.
A few months ago, two MSF-run hospitals in neighboring Saada province were hit by several airstrikes, as the Saudi-led military coalition admitted its mistakes.
The airport had been closed since Tuesday, when the coalition resumed air strikes around Sanaa following the breakdown of UN-brokered peace talks between the Yemeni government and rebels.
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“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 continued.
