Rights Group Blasts Saudi Airstrike on Hospital in Yemen

Amnesty said on Tuesday that the October 26 attack by Saudi fighter jets on Haydan Hospital in northern Yemen could amount to a war crime as it provided health services to people in four northern Yemeni provinces.

“The attack on Haydan Hospital appears to have been an unlawful attack causing harm to civilians and civilian objects. The consecutive airstrikes show deliberate targeting of the medical facility - this is another sad day for civilians,” said Philip Luther, the director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

A statement on Amnesty’s website cited accounts by staff of Doctors Without Borders, or the MSF, which was in charge of the facility, saying that Saudi warplanes attacked the hospital at least five times.

The head of the MSF mission in Yemen, Hassan Boucenine, said Saudi Arabia had the coordinates of all MSF hospitals in Yemen, including Haydan health center in Sa’ada Province.

Director of the hospital, Ali al-Mughli, denied rumors that militants opposed to Saudi Arabia were hiding in the area at the time of the attack, saying, however, that the facility often receives injured fighters. He said the Saudi attack has completely destroyed the hospital with the exception of the storage rooms.

The Amnesty statement also called for an urgent, independent and thorough investigation into the incident and similar attacks on health facilities in Yemen, Press TV reported.

“There must be an independent investigation into why hospitals and their patients are being targeted, rather than protected, as international humanitarian law requires,” said Luther.

Yemen has been under Saudi airstrikes on a daily basis since the regime in Riyadh launched its military aggression against the impoverished nation on March 26, in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.