ICRC concerned about Yemen hospital strikes
Amid Saudi Arabia’s unrelenting military aggression against Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed alarm about attacks targeting hospitals in the country, warning that lack of medical supplies has put the life of millions of people at risk.
In a report, the ICRC’s outgoing health coordinator in Yemen, Monica Arpagaus, said hospitals are no longer the safe places they used to be as they have been repeatedly targeted by airstrikes.
The regime in Riyadh started the campaign on March 26, 2015. Over 7,500 people have been killed in airstrikes ever since.
“We have incidents where hospitals have been targeted and patients have been injured and staff have been killed,” Arpagaus stated.
The Saudi campaign has been meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh. Yemen is also reeling from a blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia.
"Drugs, medication and medical supplies have been prevented from crossing frontlines into hospitals which desperately need these supplies,” Arpagaus added.
International organizations have repeatedly censured Saudi Arabia for the airstrikes on Yemen’s infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, saying the campaign is taking a huge toll on the civilian population.
The ICRC report estimated that more than 100 combat sorties have targeted health care facilities over the past months of the campaign.
Shortage of medical supplies is threatening the lives of the injured, the report said, and doctors have to treat patients in damaged buildings, with poor equipment.
The ICRC called for the removal of barriers for the delivery of medical supplies as well as an end in attacks on health care facilities.
In Sana’a, anti-Saudi demo
Yemenis in the capital, Sana’a, and elsewhere have held demonstrations on an almost weekly basis in condemnation of the Saudi aggression.
On Friday, thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of the capital in protest against the Saudi airstrikes and the use of cluster bombs by Saudi warplanes.
The demonstrators urged the United Nations to prevent the regime in Riyadh from using the weapons against the people of Yemen.
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