A missile strike on a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Yemen killed at least four people on Sunday, the group said, condemning what it called a “worrying pattern” of such attacks.
The raid was the third of its kind in four months in the war-ravaged country, where a Saudi-led coalition has been battling Shiite Houthi rebels who have seized territory from the internationally recognized government.
It also follows a US strike in Afghanistan on a facility run by the Paris-based medical humanitarian organization, known by its French acronym MSF, which killed 42 people.
Photo: EPA
MSF could not specify whether the medical facility was hit in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition or by a rocket fired from the ground.
Three MSF staff were among 10 people wounded in the Yemen strike, and two other members of staff were in “critical condition,” MSF said in a statement.
“The numbers of casualties could rise as there could still be people trapped in the rubble,” it said, adding that the missile hit the medical facility in the Razeh district of Saada Province.
All staff and patients had been evacuated, with the patients being transferred to another MSF-supported hospital in Saada, it said.
MSF director of operations Raquel Ayora denounced the strike and repeated that the organization constantly shares the coordinates of its facilities with those fighting in Yemen.
“There is no way that anyone with the capacity to carry out an air strike or launch a rocket would not have known” that the clinic was a functioning health facility supported by MSF, Ayora said.
“We strongly condemn this incident that confirms a worrying pattern of attacks to essential medical services and express our strongest outrage as this will leave a very fragile population without healthcare for weeks,” Ayora said.
“Once more, it is civilians that bear the brunt of this war,” she added.
MSF last month accused the coalition of bombing its clinic in Taez, southwest Yemen, wounding nine people including two staff members.
The coalition said it would investigate that claim although it has repeatedly insisted it does not attack civilians.
In October, air strikes hit another hospital run by MSF near Saada, without causing any deaths.
MSF facilities have also been hit elsewhere, with the deadliest recent strike coming during a US air raid on the hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz.
Washington has said the October strike, which came as NATO-backed Afghan forces clashed with insurgents for control of the northern provincial capital, was “caused primarily by human error.”
The EU led international condemnation of the latest strike, describing it as an “unacceptable attack.”
Saada is the heartland of the Shiite Houthi rebels that the coalition has been bombing since March in support of Yemen’s beleaguered government.
More than 5,800 people have been killed in Yemen since the start of the bombing campaign, about half of them civilians, according to the UN.
At least 27,000 people have been wounded and 80 percent of the population is in need of humanitarian aid, according to UN figures.
UN Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed arrived in Sana’a on Sunday to convince the rebels and their allies to attend a new round of peace talks.
He had met with Yemeni government officials temporarily based in Riyadh, before he headed to Sana’a.
Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdel Malak al-Mekhlafi said the talks, initially scheduled to start on Thursday had been postponed until Wednesday or Saturday next week.
The government sat down with the rebels and their allies last month in Switzerland for six days of talks that ended without a major breakthrough.
Also on Sunday, Yemeni intelligence official Colonel Ali Saleh al-Nakhibi was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in second city Aden, a security official said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion