More War Crimes from US Ally, Yemen: Bombs a Hospital
Who bombs a hospital? What made the Yemeni military think it was “abandoned”? MSF had just withdrawn their personnel days earlier.
CP: SAN’A, Yemen — Yemeni warplanes killed at least 44 Shiite rebels in a series air strikes near the Saudi border, a senior government official said Sunday. The insurgents, however, claim the dead were civilians.
Mohammed Abdelallah al-Qawsi, deputy interior minister, said 27 of the rebels were killed by a strike on a rebel hideout in an abandoned hospital in the small town of Razeh.
The rebels, however, said the hospital was still functional and those killed inside were civilians.
“This is another lie by the government, all those who were killed were innocent civilians,” said rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel Salam by telephone.
The Yemeni army maintained rebels were shooting at the army from the hospital.
The international aid group, Medecins Sans Frontieres, said Razeh hospital was a fully functioning facility when they evacuated their staff from it Thursday.
Reporters are not allowed to travel into the combat zone and it is usually difficult to verify the claims made by the two sides.
The Yemeni army has been embroiled in a five-year conflict with rebels in the northern province of Saada that erupted when Shiite fighters took up arms against the central government, complaining of neglect and the widening influence of hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, some of whom consider Shiites heretics.
