At least 11 people were killed and 19 others injured late Monday in Yemen in a Saudi-led airstrike that hit a hospital operated by the medical charity group Doctors Without Borders.
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The group, known by the French acronym MSF, said the strike hit the hospital near the Houthi rebel stronghold of Saada, where teams were still attending to the wounded.
Aid group, Doctors Without Borders, said the strike in Haydan hit a school and wounded another 28 people, and that all of the victims were between eight and 15 years old.
The Arab coalition has been battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March 2015 in support of Yemen’s government, after the insurgents seized Sanaa before expanding to other parts of the country.
Hadi’s internationally recognized government and the United Nations have criticized the council, set up after U.N. -backed peace talks in Kuwait collapsed.
Fresh coalition air strikes on Tuesday struck Abs, Saada and areas surrounding Sanaa, military sources and residents said.
At the time of Monday’s attack, there were 23 patients in the surgery ward, 23 in the maternity ward, 13 newborns and 12 patients in the pediatric ward, the group said. In reference to the attack in Yemen, MSF said: “All warring parties, including the Saudi led coalition (SLC), are regularly informed of the Global Positioning System coordinates of the medical sites where MSF works and we are in constant dialogue with them to ensure that they understand the severity of the humanitarian consequences of the conflict and the need to respect the provision of medical services”, says Raquel Ayora Director of Operations.
“The team will “obtain more information from MSF and will publicly announce the findings” of the probe”, it said in a statement published on the official Saudi Press Agency.
The Abs hospital facilities, located in Hajjah province, have provided numerous medical services, assistance on emergencies, maternal health care, and dialysis to people in the region. The agency has also considered MSF’s claims about bombings that Coalition airstrikes perpetrated on two schools in northern Yemen on Saturday, causing the death of 14 children.
The so-called Supreme Political Council condemned the hospital strike in a statement on the rebels’ sabanews.net website, blaming the global community whose “silence has encouraged the coalition.to commit further massacres”.
Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened to support exiled the Yemeni government in 2015, but failed to bring it back to power in the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
“The bombardment of this hospital is a deplorable act that has cost civilian lives, including medical staff who are dedicated to helping sick and injured people under some of the most challenging conditions”, Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program, said in a statement.
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The UN and credible human rights organisations report widespread allegations of breaches of the laws of war in Yemen by all parties to the conflict.
