How Saudi Arabia tried to blame Doctors Without Borders after bombing its cholera treatment center in Yemen
Saudi
Arabia tried to blame Doctors Without Borders after the US-backed
Saudi coalition bombed the medical group’s cholera treatment center
in Yemen. MSF says this is ridiculous and false.
by
Ben Norton
The
Saudi embassy in the United States pointed the finger at Doctors
Without Borders after the US-backed Saudi coalition bombed the
medical humanitarian group’s newly constructed cholera treatment
center in Yemen.
The
Saudi government circulated a misleading fax from a Doctors Without
Borders (MSF) employee, to try to absolve itself of responsibility
for the airstrike. I contacted MSF for clarification, and the
organization said the fax is being misrepresented, and strongly
condemned the “unacceptable attack on a medical facility.”
On June
11, the US-backed Saudi coalition waging war on Yemen bombed a
cholera treatment center in the northwestern town of Abs. This
medical facility, which had just been built, was operated by MSF, and
was clearly marked on the roof with the logos of MSF and the Red
Crescent.
The
Saudi coalition has repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure in
its three-year war on Yemen, with more than one-third of its
thousands of air raids hitting civilian sites. This has devastated
the health system in the poorest country in the Middle East,
unleashing the worst humanitarian catastrophe on Earth and the
largest cholera outbreak in recorded history, with more than 1
million cases of the easily preventable disease in 2017 alone.
Early on
June 13, the embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC
tweeted a photo of a fax from MSF’s administrator of communication
and liaison in Djibouti. This document is dated June 11, and the
Saudi embassy claimed it showed MSF “clearly admit that the
unfortunate facility incident was due to their failure to update
their coordinates per standard procedures.”
MSF told
me this claim is false. The organization clarified that it gave the
Saudi coalition the GPS coordinates for its cholera treatment center
at least 12 times in writing, and the coalition “acknowledged
receipt of these coordinates in writing at least nine times.”
Full
report:
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