By Zekeriyya al-Kemali
SANAA (AA): 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.
The group, also known as its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said on Twitter that warplanes struck a hospital in the Abs area of northern Hajjeh province and that the coordinates and map location of the facility were sent to Saudi-led coalition forces and other warring parties in Yemen in an attempt to prevent any possible attacks.
Pro-Houthi television channel Al-Massira reported that the airstrike was carried out by Saudi-led coalition forces.
The airstrikes Monday comes just two day after 10 children were killed in Saudi-led airstrike on a school in Yemen’s stronghold of the Houthi group, according to MSF who said 28 children were also injured in the attack in the Haydan of Saada province.
The aid agency said the children ranged in ages from 8 – 15, but without specifying which group was behind the airstrike.
Saudi Arabian media said Saturday that a senior Houthi leader was killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in Saada.
In October, the Saudi coalition bombed an MSF-supported hospital in Yemen’s Haydan district, destroying the only emergency medical facility serving 200,000 people. In December, airstrikes destroyed an MSF clinic in Taiz while doctors were treating the wounded from a nearby Saudi airstrike in a park. And in January, the coalition destroyed a hospital in Razeh district, killing five people — and killing an ambulance driver working for MSF later that month.
Yemen fell into a civil war in late 2014 when the Ansar Allah (Houthis) and allied forces of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh overran the capital of Sanaa and other provinces, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his Saudi-backed government to temporarily flee to Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen in March 2015, aimed at reversing Houthi gains and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.
Backed by Saudi-led airstrikes, pro-Hadi forces have since managed to reclaim large swathes of the country’s south — including provisional capital Aden — but have failed to retake Sanaa and other strategic areas.
UN-brokered peace talks between the Yemeni government and Houthis collapsed last week in Kuwait.
Additional reporting by The Muslim News
[Photo: A view of the collapsed building after war crafts belonging the Saudi-led coalition targeted the building of vocational high school, at Badan district of Ibb, Yemen, killing 10 children, on August 14, 2016. Photographer: Adel Alsharaee/AA]
