Saudi-led air strikes on a school in a rebel-held province of northern Yemen have killed 10 children and wounded 28 others, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday.
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Saudi authorities say a Yemeni national accused of killing a Saudi policeman had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and may be linked to an attack past year on security forces that killed 15 people. More than 4,000 patients have been treated in the facility over the past year. Once again, today we witness the tragic consequences of the bombing of a hospital.
Twelve humanitarian aid agencies are calling on the Saudi-led coalition battling Yemeni rebels to lift “inexcusable” restrictions on the country’s airspace in order to allow the resumption of humanitarian and commercial flights to the global airport in the capital Sanaa.
Another four children and three adults were killed in a coalition airstrike on a school in nearby Razeh district.
The U.N. children’s agency called on “all parties to the conflict in Yemen to respect and abide by their obligations under global law”, stressing, “This includes the obligation to only target combatants and limit harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure”.
The UN chief also called upon the parties to renew – without delay and in good faith – their engagement with his Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, in pursuit of a negotiated solution, the statement said. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, 6,500 people have been killed, roughly half of whom are civilians, in the last 500 days, and almost 20 million have no access to clean water.
News of the bombing comes just a week after UN-backed peace talks collapsed between the USA and Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Shiite Houthi insurgents, who seized Sanaa, the nation’s capital, and other regions since 2014.
The attack has been blamed on the Saudi-led Arab coalition which has been waging a war against Houthi rebels.
The U.S. State Department is “deeply concerned” about the reported hospital strike and is conferring with Saudi officials about civilian casualties, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau.
A USA aerial attack on an MSF-run hospital in Afghanistan last October killed 42 people. “Either intentional or as a result of negligence, this is unacceptable”, she said.
“We call on all parties to cease hostilities immediately”, Trudeau said. “Continued military actions only prolong the suffering of the Yemeni people”. Over the past weeks, the hospital had seen an increase in wounded patients, mostly victims of recent clashes and the aerial campaign in the area. At the moment of the strike, there were 23 patients in surgery, 25 patients in the maternity ward, 13 new-borns and 12 paediatrics.
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