#Yemen: An MSF supported hospital has been hit by a projectile in Northern Yemen causing at least 4 dead and 10 injured #Razeh
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Saudi Arabia Conducted 119 Airstrikes Against Civilian Targets In Yemen, UN Panel Finds
Saudi Arabia Conducted 119 Airstrikes Against Civilian Targets In Yemen, UN Panel Finds
In March, Saudi Arabia’s air campaign in Yemen will enter its second year.
Riyadh began flying combat missions last year in an effort to rollback the Iran-backed militiamen who drove Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi into exile. The results of the strikes have been mixed. The Houthis were driven from Aden but the fight for Sana’a is far from over.
And while the Saudis and the Houthis battle it out, ISIS and al-Qaeda are doing what they do best: finding opportunities amid the chaos. Just today for instance, ISIS claimed responsibility for a car bomb that exploded outside of Hadi’s residence in Aden. Hadi was unharmed but six people were killed in the attack.
As you might recall, the Saudis have a rather checkered human rights record. Earlier this month, the kingdom carried out its largest mass execution in 25 years, killing 47 in what Riyadh pitched as a crackdown on “terrorists.”
That rather blatant disregard for human life has carried over into the air campaign in Yemen.
As we’ve documented extensively, Riyadh’s warplanes have “accidentally” hit everything from MSF hospitals to wedding parties and just last week, we brought you the following footage of what Yemen Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Nashwan Attab called a “heinous massacre” involving an ambulance and rescue workers.
Now, a 51-page report from a UN panel of experts on Yemen has revealed “widespread and systematic” attacks on civilian targets by Saudi planes.
The report (which was obtained by The Guardian) says the following:
“The panel documented that the coalition had conducted airstrikes targeting civilians and civilian objects, in violation of international humanitarian law, including camps for internally displaced persons and refugees; civilian gatherings, including weddings; civilian vehicles, including buses; civilian residential areas; medical facilities; schools; mosques; markets, factories and food storage warehouses; and other essential civilian infrastructure, such as the airport in Sana’a, the port in Hudaydah and domestic transit routes.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
5 killed in missile strike on Medicins Sans Frontieres clinic in Yemen
5 killed in missile strike on Medicins Sans Frontieres clinic in Yemen
At least five people have been killed in a missile strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres medical facility in Yemen. The organization “strongly condemns this,” while adding that 10 people have been injured in the attack.
“We can confirm five dead people; we have transferred several injured to our other hospital in Sanaa, some of them are in critical condition,” MSF director of operations Raquel Ayora told RT.
“The hospital is no longer functioning. It’s been decreasing its services to the civilian population over the last months, only running life-saving and essential services. And right now there is no capacity to provide medical assistance in this hospital,” she added.
The facility, which was hit by a rocket on Sunday, is in Razeh in the north of the country. In a statement on Twitter, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) say they, “strongly condemn this and we reiterate to all parties to the conflict that patients & medical facilities must be respected.”
“We haven’t received … any feedback [so far] from any of our contacts in the different lines of command, so we can not confirm if any investigation has been launched,” the MSF official told RT.
According to MSF staff on the ground, one missile hit the Shiara Hospital, where the humanitarian organization has been operating since November, 2015. MSF say they are unable to say who was responsible for the attack, but mentioned planes were seen flying over the facility at the time the attack took place. The organization adds that the death toll could rise as there is the possibility that people are still trapped in the rubble.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘No armed combatants, no fighting’: MSF issues Afghan hospital bombing report
‘No armed combatants, no fighting’: MSF issues Afghan hospital bombing report
A Médecins Sans Frontières investigation into the Afghan hospital bombing by US forces has found that there were no armed combatants or weapons within the compound, and no fighting in the direct vicinity of the hospital at the time of the airstrikes.
In its report released on Thursday, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) addressed the “relentless and brutal aerial attack by US forces” which took place in Kunduz on October 3 and killed at least 30 people, including MSF staff.
“The MSF rules in the hospital were implemented and respected, including the ‘no weapon’ policy and MSF was in full control of the hospital at the time of the airstrikes,” the organization stated.
The document also said there were “no armed combatants within the hospital compound and there was no fighting from or in the direct vicinity” of the trauma center at the time of the strikes.
The hospital was “fully functioning” at the time of the airstrikes, with 105 patients admitted and surgeries taking place, according to the findings of the investigation.
In addition, MSF said the “agreement to respect the neutrality of our medical facility based on the applicable sections of International Humanitarian Law was fully in place and agreed with all parties to the conflict prior to the attack.”
Despite that neutrality, the hospital was still the target of a US airstrike, leading MSF to ask how such an attack was allowed to happen.
“The question remains as to whether our hospital lost its protected status in the eyes of the military forces engaged in this attack – and if so, why,” MSF said in its statement.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Is the U.S. Refusing an Independent Investigation If Its Hospital Airstrike Was an “Accident”?
In Geneva this morning, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) demanded a formal, independent investigation into the U.S. airstrike on its hospital in Kunduz. The group’s international president, Dr. Joanne Liu (pictured above, center), specified that the inquiry should be convened pursuant to war crime-investigating procedures established by the Geneva Conventions and conducted by The International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. “Even war has rules,” Liu said. “This was just not an attack on our hospital. It was an attack on the Geneva Conventions. This cannot be tolerated.”
Liu emphasized that the need for an “independent, impartial” investigation is now particularly compelling given what she called “the inconsistency in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened over the recent days.” On Monday, we documented the multiple conflicting accounts offered in the first three days by the U.S. military and its media allies, but the story continued to change even further after that. As The Guardian’s headline yesterday noted, the U.S. admission that its own personnel called in the airstrike — not Afghan forces as it claimed the day before — meant that “U.S. alters story for fourth time in four days.” All of this led Liu to state the obvious today: “We cannot rely on internal military investigations by the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces.”
An independent, impartial investigation into what happened here should be something everyone can immediately agree is necessary. But at its daily press briefing on Monday, the U.S. State Department, through its spokesperson Mark Toner, insisted that no such independent investigation was needed on the ground that the U.S. government is already investigating itself and everyone knows how trustworthy and reliable this process is:
QUESTION: The — so MSF is calling for an independent investigation of this incident by a neutral international body. Is that something the administration would support?
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U.S. Bombing of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan Was No Accident – “It Was the Target”
U.S. Bombing of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan Was No Accident – “It Was the Target”
In particular, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility “frantically” called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a “sustained” manner for 30 more minutes.
– From Glenn Greenwald’s article: The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification
By now, all of you will have read about the U.S. military’s recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. What you may not be aware of, is how much the official story has changed in the days since this inexcusable act of barbarism became public.
Doctors Without Borders has been calling the attack a “war crime,” which to the average American sounds outlandish and impossible. The justification for this claim is simple — that the airstrike wasn’t an accident at all, and that the U.S. military intentionally targeted the hospital. As the days go by, it becomes increasingly clear that this is indeed the case, and the Pentagon is now scrambling to justify the intentional targeting of a hospital.
As Glenn Greenwald reports at the Intercept:
When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Doctors Accuse White House Of Lying To Justify “Collateral Damage” In Kabul Hospital Bombing
Doctors Accuse White House Of Lying To Justify “Collateral Damage” In Kabul Hospital Bombing
By way of excuse for what President Obama called “a tragic incident,” (and The UN called a ‘war crime’) US officials have claimed that the Taliban were fighting from within the Kabul hospital (which was destroyed by a US air strike yesterday killing at least 19 including 3 children) using aid workers as “a human shield.” However, this justification for the ‘collateral damage’ has been vehemently denied by Medecins Sans Frontier (MSF) who have issued a statement dismissing the US claims, “the gates of the hospital compound were closed all night so no one that is not staff, a patient or a caretaker was inside the hospital when the bombing happened…” but, the US strike has done one thing, as one local health official concluded, “this city is no longer for the living.”
In a statement, President Barack Obama offered condolences to the victims of what he called “the tragic incident” where as we detailed previously, the aid group MSF has said an air strike, probably carried out by U.S.-led coalition forces, killed 19 staff and patients on Saturday in a hospital it runs in Kunduz, leaving 37 wounded. The ‘reason’ offered by US officials, as Reuters reports,
The U.S. military said it conducted an air strike “in the vicinity” of the hospital, as it targeted Taliban insurgents who were directly firing on U.S. military personnel.…
In Kabul, the Afghan Ministry of Defense said Taliban fighters had attacked the hospital and were using the building “as a human shield”.
But the medical aid group denied this.
“The gates of the hospital compound were closed all night so no one that is not staff, a patient or a caretaker was inside the hospital when the bombing happened,” Medecins Sans Frontieres said in a statement on Sunday. “In any case, bombing a fully functioning hospital can never be justified.”Witnesses said patients were burned alive in the crowded hospital after the airstrike. Among the dead were three children being treated.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Bombs Afghanistan Hospital, Kills 9 Civilians, Injures 37; Tosses It Off As “Collateral Damage”
US Bombs Afghanistan Hospital, Kills 9 Civilians, Injures 37; Tosses It Off As “Collateral Damage”
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for US foreign policy, or for the credibility of the US state department to slide further, it got much worse.
Less than a day after US ambassador to the UN, uber-warhawk Samantha Power informed Russia of the latest US foreign policy stance by tweeter, when she called “on Russia to immediately cease attacks on Syrian oppo[sition and] civilians” in the latest desperate attempt to halt the Russian campaign against US-created ISIS which may wipe out the terrorist threat in just a few short days, it was the US itself which admitted that early on Saturday the US airforce bombed an Afghan hospital run by the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors without Borders, in the Afghan city of Kunduz in an air strike that killed at least nine people and wounded 37.
As the Executive Director, of Doctors without Borders Jason Cone tweeted, “all parties 2 conflict, including in Kabul & Washington, were clearly informed of precise GPS Coordinates of @MSF facilities in Kunduz” and that the “precise location of @MSF Kunduz hospital communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over past months, including on 9/29.”
In other words, this morning’s US bombing was nothing more than another example of the utter incompetence, carelessness and disregard for innocent civilian lives that has become a staple hallmark of US foreign policy, something we have already witnessed repeatedly in the past 6 years as a result of the thousands of innocent people dead as part of US drone attacks, also known as “collateral damage.”
The attack, which started at 2:15am local time, took place when almost 200 patients and employees were in the hospital, the only one in the region that can deal with major injuries, Medecins Sans Frontieres said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
