Alex Emmons - Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Hospital Bombing in Yemen Earns Rare Saudi Rebuke at US State Department
AFTER THE
U.S.-BACKED, Saudi-led
coalition bombed a
hospital in Yemen supported by Doctors Without Borders on Monday, the U.S.
State Department offered a rare condemnation of the coalition’s violence. “Of course we condemn
the attack,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, a spokesman for the State Department.
The State Department
has previously deflected questions about coalition attacks by referring
reporters to the Saudi government — even though the U.S. has supplied
the coalition with billions
of dollars of weapons, and has refueled
Saudi planes. Trudeau also stressed
that “U.S. officials regularly engage with Saudi officials” about civilian
casualties — a line that spokespeople have repeated for
months. Saudi Arabia has nevertheless continued to bomb civilian sites,
including homes, markets, factories, and schools. “We’ve also encouraged
them to do their utmost to protect entities protected by international law,
such as hospitals,” said Trudeau.
But for the Saudi
coalition, bombing medical facilities has become business as usual. In October,
the coalition bombed an MSF-supported
hospital in Yemen’s Haydan district, destroying the only emergency
medical facility serving 200,000 people. (Doctors Without Borders is also known
as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF.) In December, airstrikes destroyed an MSF clinic in
Taiz while doctors were treating the wounded from a nearby Saudi airstrike
in a park. And in January, the coalition destroyed
a hospital in Razeh district, killing five people — and killing an
ambulance driver working for MSF later that month.
Those strikes have
been widely reported because they targeted a prominent Western charity, but the
coalition has likely carried out far more attacks on Yemeni-run hospitals.
During the first eight months of the war, between March and November 2015, the
International Red Cross received hundreds
of reports on attacks on health facilities throughout the country.
The hospital attack
comes in the midst of an aggressive offensive by the Saudi regime after Houthi
rebels in Yemen rejected a one-sided
peace deal earlier this month. The coalition has since destroyed a food
factory, a children’s
school, and a bridge that Oxfam described as
“the main supply route for Sana.” On Monday, Trudeau
also denounced the destruction of the bridge. “We have seen those reports, and
if the bridge was deliberately struck by coalition forces, we would find this
completely unacceptable,” she said. “The bridge was critical for the delivery
of humanitarian assistance, destruction will further complicate efforts to
provide assistance to the people of Yemen.”
Trudeau clarified with
reporters after the briefing that she meant that statement as a condemnation.
“The bridge — you saw me condemn that today,” she said. Condemnation, rather
than, say, concern, is considered strong diplomatic language. The Saudi-led
campaign in Yemen has launched the country into a humanitarian crisis. In March
2015, Saudi Arabia has imposed a strict blockade on Yemen, which
previously imported 90
percent of its food and medicine. According to UNICEF in
May, the conflict has left 21 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance,
and more than 300,000 children under 5 at risk of severe malnutrition.
Despite the
condemnations, Trudeau refused to say whether the State Department would
reconsider arming the Saudi regime. “I have nothing to preview on that,” she
said.
