ADEN // Four people were killed and 10 injured in a missile strike on Sunday on a health clinic in northern Yemen.
The numbers of casualties could rise as several buildings collapsed when the missile struck the Medecins Sans Frontieres clinic in the Razeh district of Saada province, and the aid agency said people could still be trapped in rubble.
Three MSF staff were among the injured, and two of them are in critical condition.
All staff and patients were moved from the site, with patients transferred to another MSF-supported hospital in Saada.
MSF could not say if the clinic was hit by an air strike or by a rocket fired from the ground.
The agency’s director of operations, Raquel Ayora, said it constantly shared the GPS coordinates of its medical facilities with the Saudi-led coalition and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
“We strongly condemn this incident that confirms a worrying pattern of attacks to essential medical services and express our strongest outrage as this will leave a very fragile population without health care for weeks,” she said.
“Once more it is civilians that bear the brunt of this war.”
MSF operates in eight Yemeni provinces at a time when many foreign aid groups and even United Nations personnel have been moved out. It has been working at the clinic since November. The coalition, which is fighting to restore Yemen’s internationally recognised government and includes the UAE, does not attack civilians.
It is investigating an MSF claim that its aircraft struck a clinic in the south-western province of Taez last month, injuring nine people including two agency staff.
In October, air strikes hit a hospital run by MSF near Saada, the heartland of the Houthi rebels, without causing deaths.
The UN envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, arrived in Sanaa, the rebel-held capital, on Sunday in a bid to convince the rebels and their allies to attend a new round of peace talks.
Talks in Switzerland last month raised hopes that much-needed humanitarian aid could be delivered to civilians during the accompanying ceasefire, but this never took effect.
The UN estimates that about 80 per cent of the population is in need of urgent assistance after more than a year of fighting in which nearly 6,000 people have died since March, about half of them civilians. The coalition has helped pro-government forces push back the rebels in several southern provinces after driving them out of the port city of Aden in July.
The Emirates Red Crescent, which has spearheaded the UAE’s humanitarian efforts, delivered medical supplies, materials and equipment to the Prosthetics Centre in Aden on Sunday.
“In addition, the UAE built a new store for the centre’s medical machines and for storing medical supplies,” said Abdullah Al Qaisi, the director of the centre.
“The centre receives more than 70 cases a week because of the war, as most of the patients are fighters of the resistance, in addition to children who suffer from paralysis and other diseases.”
He said the Red Crecent would also pay the salaries of the centre’s employees for the next two months, and possibly until next year.
In neighbouring Abyan province, the Red Crescent and local authorities began distributing food baskets to 1,000 poor families in Jaar and Khanfar districts and the Amodia area of Zinjibar district.
The head of the food distribution campaign in Abyan, Ayat Al Authali, said this was the second stage of the programme in Abyan.
“There will be a third stage in the next week,” he said.
Also on Sunday, gunmen shot dead an intelligence officer in the Al Mansoura district of Aden. Ali Saleh Al Nahkebi, director of political security in Khour Maksar district, was killed as he left a mosque after midday prayers.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
