DUBAI—At least two airstrikes hit a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in northern Yemen, wounding two people and severely damaging the facility, the medical group said Tuesday, as concern grows among United Nations officials and rights groups about escalating civilian casualties in the seven-month war.
Hassan Boucenine, who oversees the charity’s projects in Yemen, didn’t say who was responsible for the airstrikes late Monday that destroyed the offices and maternity ward of the clinic in Saada province, near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia.
He said, however, the organization, known by its French initials MSF, had requested a response to the attack from officials of the Saudi-led coalition that is carrying out an air campaign in Yemen to unseat the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in control of the capital San’a. Saada province is a Houthi stronghold.
It is the second time in less than a month that MSF has come under fire. A U.S. AC-130 gunship carried out an hour-long attack on an MSF hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on Oct. 3, killing 30 people and forcing the installation to close.
Monday’s explosions at the Yemen clinic, which also caused heavy damage to its emergency room, left staff and patients stunned.
“It happened very fast, in a matter of minutes,” Mr. Boucenine said. “Everyone was in a state of panic.”
A spokesman for the coalition, which controls Yemeni airspace, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
As recently as two weeks ago, MSF updated coalition officials with the coordinates of Saada facility, Mr. Boucenine said. The Houthis have no functioning air force.
The U.N. says more than 2,500 Yemeni civilians have died since March in fighting between Houthi militants and the Saudi-led coalition of mainly Sunni Muslim Arab states that includes ground forces loyal to the exiled president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The U.N. said until the end of June, the majority of the civilian deaths were caused by coalition airstrikes.
The coalition has been blamed for several explosions, including strikes in San’a’s historic Old City last month that killed 31 people, and raids in July near a power plant in the city of Mocha that killed 65 people.
The coalition denied responsibility for a blast last month that killed more than 130 people at a wedding party in Mocha.
The U.S. is providing intelligence and logistical aid to the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen through a joint planning cell set up shortly after the strikes began. The U.S. has said it doesn’t have a say in targeting decisions made by the coalition, and encourages the coalition to investigate allegations of civilian deaths.
In fighting Tuesday, Saudi state TV said coalition strikes targeted seven boats carrying weapons for Houthis to an island off Yemen’s western coast.
Ground fighting in recent days has centered on the southern city of Taiz. MSF said Sunday that it was unable to resupply two hospitals in the city, leaving them with a critical shortage of drugs and equipment to help patients with war wounds.
There have been calls by foreign governments and rights groups for an independent international inquiry into civilian deaths and human-rights violations on both sides of Yemen’s war.
A U.S.-supported Dutch proposal before the U.N. Human Rights Council to set up such an inquiry was dropped last month in favor of a Saudi proposal that leaves such an investigation in the hands of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in exile.
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