Rocket attack on MSF clinic kills four in Yemen

A "projectile" struck a clinic supported by international medical group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in north Yemen on Sunday, killing four people and wounding 10.

The incident is the latest attack on the organisation’s facilities in the war-torn country.

MSF said it was not clear who was behind the attack on the Shiara Hospital in the Razeh district, where the group has worked since November last year.

In a statement on its Twitter account, MSF did not identify who was killed in the attack, but said that three of the wounded were staff members, of whom two were in a critical condition.

“This is the third severe incident in the last three months. Our teams struggle on a daily basis to ensure the respect of health facilities,” MSF wrote.

An earlier tweet by the group described the projectile as a rocket.

Regional MSF operations chief Raquel Ayora said all warring parties are regularly informed of the GPS coordinates of the medical sites where the group works, and that MSF was in constant dialogue with them.

“There is no way that anyone with the capacity to carry out an air strike or launch a rocket would not have known that the Shiara Hospital was a functioning health facility providing critical services and supported by MSF,” she said.

MSF said Saudi-led air strikes hit another of its health facilities in the province in October last year, wrecking the building and lightly wounding two staff members.

Yemen conflict

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been fighting the Iran-allied Houthi group in Yemen, a campaign Riyadh says is aimed at repelling what it sees as creeping Iranian influence in the Arabian Peninsula.

Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since the Saudi coalition entered Yemen’s conflict in March, almost half of them civilians.

The war has exacerbated hunger and disease in Yemen, the region’s poorest country.

Reuters