At least 11 killed in coalition air raid on Yemen hospital
SANAA: An Arab coalition air raid hit a Yemeni hospital on Monday, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 19, just 48 hours after strikes that killed children, Doctors Without Borders ( MSF) said.
MSF said a blast “partially destroyed” a hospital at Abs, located in the rebel-held province of Hajja, in the fourth attack on one of its facilities in less than a year.
The United States and Amnesty International separately condemned the attack.
Nine people were killed in the explosion, including one MSF staff member, while two more patients died while being transferred to another clinic.
“Once again, a fully functional hospital full of patients and MSF national and international staff members, was bombed in a war that has shown no respect for medical facilities or patients,” Teresa Sancristoval, of MSF’s Emergency Unit in Yemen, said in a statement.
The GPS coordinates of the hospital “were repeatedly shared with all parties to the conflict, including the Saudi-led coalition, and its location was well-known,” the statement added.
The coalition has been battling Iran-backed rebels since March 2015 in support of Yemen’s government, after the insurgents seized Sanaa before moving into other parts of the country.
Earlier this month, the coalition acknowledged ‘shortcomings’ in two out of eight cases it has investigated of UN- condemned air strikes on civilian targets in Yemen.
On Monday, it promised to probe another attack that MSF said killed 10 children over the weekend at a school in the rebel-held northern province of Saada.
Sancristoval said that nothing “seems to be done to make parties involved in the conflict in Yemen respect medical staff and patients.
“Without action, these public gestures are meaningless for today’s victims.
Either intentional or a result of a negligence, this is unacceptable.”
Residents in Abs said coalition jets, which have been striking rebel military targets in the town for several days, hit the hospital and caused casualties.
Rebel sources said the coalition struck a first-aid building beside the facility.
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 AFP by phone from Barcelona, Spain.
“It’s a rural hospital which
Once again, a fully functional hospital full of patients and MSF national and international staff members, was bombed in a war that has shown no respect for medical facilities or patients. Teresa Sancristoval, MSF Emergency Unit in Yemen
was full when the raid occurred, although it is difficult to estimate how many,” she said.
“The hospital was partially destroyed. We can’t work in it without major repairs.” Abs is adjacent to the town of Harad, on the border with Saudi Arabia, and from where rebels have repeatedly shelled areas on the kingdom’s side of the frontier, causing both civilian and military deaths.
A border guard corporal became the latest Saudi casualty Monday, the interior ministry said in Riyadh.
Harad itself is seeing fierce fighting and is frequently a target of heavy coalition air strikes.
Pro- government military sources, who are fighting alongside coalition forces in Harad, said military vehicles had taken rebel casualties to the Abs hospital before Monday’s air strikes. — AFP