- The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A Doctors Without Borders health clinics in Yemen was bombed in a Saudi-led airstrike on Monday, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strike, spokeswoman Dalila Mahdawi said. She cautioned that workers at the site are still gathering information, CNN reported.

Sources on the ground said Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces allegedly carried out up to six consecutive strikes on Hayden Hospital, located in the Haydan Directorate in Sa’da governorate.

The Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement denied it had bombed the hospital, the BBC reported.

According to a statement from the organization, widely known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontier (MSF), all staff on duty and two in-patients manage to escape between the first and second air strikes on Monday night.

After visiting the site on Tuesday morning, MSF’s project coordinator in the region, Miriam Czech, told reporters she was not able to go into the clinic “as we believed there were remaining bombs that nave no exploded, but I can confirm that the facility is 99% destroyed.”

MSF country director Hassan Boucenine told Reuters that the latest hospital bombing “could be a mistake, but that fact of the matter is it’s a war crime.” 

“There’s no reason to target a hospital. We provided [the coalition] with all of our GPS co-ordinates about two weeks ago,” he added.

The bombing in Yemen comes almost a month after U.S. air strikes destroyed another MSF hospital killing at least 22 people in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has said that the hospital was mistakenly struck and has launched its own investigation into the incident, in addition to two other investigations led by NATO and the Afghan government. 

 

 

 

• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.

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