Médecins Sans Frontières has accused the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen of bombing one of its mobile clinics, wounding nine people including two staff members.

The international charity said it had provided the coalition with the GPS coordinates of the clinic in the besieged city of Taiz, the scene of intense fighting between forces backed by the coalition and troops loyal to the Houthis. Yemen is now nine months into a war between the Houthis – Iranian-backed rebels from the northern province of Sa’ada who overthrew the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi – and the Saudi-led coalition which intervened to save Hadi’s government and holds the southern port city of Aden. The crisis has sparked a humanitarian emergency with millions in need of aid and more than 5,000 dead. The security vacuum has empowered al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula, one of the most powerful branches of the terror network, which this week seized two cities, including the provincial capital of Zinjibar in Abyan province.

A newly formed wing of Islamic State is also operating in Yemen and has carried out a series of suicide bombings, particularly against Houthi targets.

MSF said the coalition first bombed a park just 1.2 miles (2km) from the clinic on Wednesday. The charity informed the coalition that it was operating a facility nearby, but the clinic itself was bombed shortly afterwards.

It was the fourth such attack on an MSF facility in recent weeks. Earlier this week, the Syrian government bombed an MSF-supported hospital in Homs with a “double-tap” barrel bombing, and the coalition bombed another hospital in the Houthi-dominated province of Sa’ada in October. That attack came just weeks after an MSF hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan was levelled by American airstrikes.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for an investigation into the Yemen bombing. “The secretary general underscores that medical facilities and medical personnel are explicitly protected under international humanitarian law. He calls for a prompt, effective and impartial investigation into today’s incident,” a statement said.

The Saudi-led coalition said in a statement carried on the state-run Saudi Press Agency on Friday that it had begun an investigation to “verify whether the news is true”. It said it would “publish the findings with the utmost transparency and frankness”.

Germany’s intelligence agency took the rare step this week of issuing a public report warning of the risks of a more interventionist and impulsive Saudi foreign policy after the accession of the young Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the role of crown prince, pointing to the kingdom’s attempts to shape politics in Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon and Iraq as part of its rivalry with regional arch-nemesis Iran.



The German government rebuked itsintelligence agency on Friday, saying the assessment did not reflect official views.