Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that it would evacuate staff from six hospitals in Yemen, following the deaths of more than a dozen people in the bombing of a hospital earlier this week.
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In response to an Associated Press request for comment, the Saudi-led coalition said its Joint Incidents Assessment Team “is aware of reports of an airstrike on a hospital in Yemen’s northern Hajjah province”.
The coalition denied targeting a school, saying instead that it bombed a camp where rebels train underage soldiers.
In the southern Abyan province, where government forces launched a campaign this week to retake territory from al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, a family of five, including a 12-year old boy, was killed when the vehicle they were riding in was hit by a coalition airstrike, Yemeni officials and residents said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday condemned an airstrike on a Yemeni hospital operated by the humanitarian association Doctors Without Borders, calling on all parties to end hostilities and find a negotiated solution.
“Given the intensity of the current offensive and our loss of confidence in the SLCs (Saudi-led coalition’s) ability to prevent such fatal attacks, MSF considers the hospitals in Saada and Hajjah governorates unsafe for both patients and staff”, the medical group stated. “The circumstances of this attack must be thoroughly and independently investigated”, said Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Amnesty’s worldwide program.
Saudi fighter jets launched other attacks across Yemen on Monday, with reports suggesting that several areas were targeted in provinces of Sana’a and Sa’ada in north and Shabwah and Ta’izz in south.
The coalition began the bombing campaign in March past year after Shiite Huthi rebels seized large parts of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. It promised to publicly announce findings of the probe.
The MSF facility in Haydan, Saada governorate, was also bombed in October a year ago.
“The secretary general notes with dismay that civilians, including children, continue to bear the brunt of increased fighting and military operations in Yemen”, a United Nations statement said.
Following the fatal bombing of the Médecins Sans Frontières (doctors without borders) hospital in Yemen’s Hajjah province on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the worldwide community’s deplorable silence on the attacks against schools and hospitals has encouraged Saudi Arabia to keep committing such crimes.
Rebel sources said the coalition struck a first aid building adjacent to the facility.
A USA aerial attack on an MSF-run hospital in Afghanistan last October killed 42 people.
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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.
