Local Editor
Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders organization [MSF] in the US, Jason Cone, criticized Saudi Arabia for utter disregard for international humanitarian law in Yemen, saying that Saudi warplanes pound hospitals, clinics and medical staff in the country.
The senior official said on Friday that Saudi military aircraft targeted three health facilities run by MSF in Yemen over the past three months in flagrant violation of the international laws that call for the protection of medical sites and personnel.
He further cited the January 21 aerial attack in Yemen’s mountainous and northwestern province of Sa’ada, where an ambulance driver working alongside MSF lost his life while trying to reach the victims of an earlier airstrike in the region.
Saudi warplanes also carried out two strikes against Shiara Hospital in northern Yemen on January 10, leaving at least six people dead and seven others injured.
Additionally, Cone said that patients, fearing for their own lives, did not return to the hospital after the attack, and some pregnant women even gave birth in caves.
On December 2, 2015, nine people, including two staff members with the MSF were wounded when Saudi jets launched three airstrikes against a clinic in al-Houban district of the southern Yemeni province of Taiz.
The assaults came after MSF staff from the clinic informed Saudi officials that their military aircraft were attacking the area indiscriminately.
Relatively, Saudi warplanes also bombed a Yemeni Health Ministry hospital in the Haydan district of Sa’ada Province on October 26. MSF teams were treating wounded patients, pregnant women and children there at the time.
The MSF now called upon the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to independently assess Saudi violations of humanitarian law in Yemen, and look into the January 10 attack on Shiara Hospital.
It further criticized some members of the UN Security Council, namely the UK, France and the US, for supplying munitions to the Saudi army.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, bombs were dropped nearly 100 times on or close to Yemeni medical facilities between March and November last year.
Yemen has been under Saudi military attacks since late March last year. Over 8,270 people, including 2,236 children, were martyred and 16,015 others injured since March 2015.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
