MSF to withdraw from 6 hospitals in Yemen

Doctors without Borders (MSF) is to pull its staff out of six hospitals in northern Yemen after Saudi-led coalition airstrikes hit one of its facilities on Monday killing 19 people.

The strike on the facility in Abs, in Yemen’s Hajjah province, was the fourth of its kind during the year-long civil war. The charity said it considered hospitals in the Saada and Hajjah provinces to be “unsafe for both patients and staff.”

“MSF is neither satisfied nor reassured by the Saudi-led coalition’s statement that this attack was a mistake,” said MSF’s Yemen branch in a series of tweets. “That medical staff, sick and injured people are killed inside a hospital speaks of the cruelty and inhumanity of this war.”

The charity said it condemned the way “all involved actors,” including the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels, were conducting the war.

It said that the hospitals it was withdrawing from would remain staffed by local volunteers and government employees, adding that it would support the facilities with “medications, money and incentives” for the government staff.