Saudi-led coalition bombs MSF hospital in Yemen killing 11

At least 11 people have died following a bombing by the Saudi-led coalition on a Yemeni hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The charity — also known as Doctors Without Borders — said the air strike took place in Abs, Hajjah province on Monday (15 August), with a further 13 people also reported to have been injured.

The conflict is set to escalate after UN-brokered peace talks between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed Sunni Arabs loyal to former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi collapsed last week. Both the US and Britain are aiding the Saudi-led coalition which have been criticised for targeting places commonly used by civilians.

MSF Yemen confirmed on Twitter that the Abs hospital was "hit by airstrikes at 15:45 (12:45 GMT). We are assessing the situation. Number of casualties still unknown."

In the past week, Saudi coalition planes have bombed a potato factory in the Nahda district of the capital Sana'a which killed 14 people, most of them women. In another attack an air strike struck a school in the Haydan district killing 10 students who were all under 15, according to MSF.

The coalition, which has been targeting the rebels in the impoverished nation since March 2015, have not commented on the strike. The conflict has seen more than 6,400 people killed, half of them civilians, and displaced 2.5 million citizens, according to the United Nations (UN).

Ousted president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is in exile in Riyadh after Houthi fighters, who belong to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam, took control of Sana'a in September 2014. They control the capital and the western part of Yemen and are loyal to former president Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012.

The charity says more than 4,600 patients have been treated at the Abs hospital since July 2015, reports the BBC. And last year one person was killed in a coalition air strike on an MSF-supported health centre in the neighbouring province of Saada.

Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who was previously based in Yemen, told the Guardian: "This obviously follows the collapse of the peace talks, and it was a very tenuous ceasefire to start with.

"On the one hand we've seen a dramatic escalation from the Saudi-led coalition, which is backed by the United States and Britain, in terms of attacks on areas that the Houthis control, including where we've seen this apparent airstrike on the hospital today [Monday]," he said.