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Yemen: Doctors Without Borders Hospital bombed, 4 killed

by IBNS 10 Jan 2016, 06:25 pm

Sanaa, Jan 11 (IBNS) International medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders has said a projectile hit a hospital in northern Yemen which killed at least four people.

The hospital was supported by the Doctors Without Borders.

The incident left 10 others injured and caused the collapse of several buildings of the medical facility.

According to MSF staff members on the ground, at 9:20 a.m. one projectile struck the Shiara Hospital in Razeh district, where MSF has been working since November 2015.

MSF said it could not confirm the origin of the attack, but planes were seen flying over the facility at the time. At least one more projectile fell near the hospital.

“All warring parties, including the Saudi-led coalition, are regularly informed of the GPS 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,” said Raquel Ayora, MSF director of operations, in a statement.

“There is no way that anyone with the capacity to carry out an airstrike or launch a rocket would not have known that the Shiara Hospital was a functioning health facility providing critical services and supported by MSF. We reiterate to all parties to the conflict that patients and medical facilities must be respected and that bombing hospitals is a violation of international humanitarian law," Raquel Ayora said.

This is the third severe incident in an MSF health facility in Yemen in the last three months.

“We strongly condemn this incident that confirms a worrying pattern of attacks on essential medical services and express our strongest outrage, as this will leave a very fragile population without health care for weeks,” said Ayora. “Once more it is civilians who bear the brunt of this war.”