Three-year-old Yemeni girl seeking medical help for malnutrition, January 2019. (Voice of America/Screengrab).

A Saudi coalition airstrike hit a hospital run by Save the Children in the northern province of Saada. The attack killed seven people, including four children:

A hospital we support in Saada #Yemen was bombed today. 7 ppl, inc. 4 children lost their lives. We condemn this attack, particularly as the conflict in Yemen enters its 5th year today. Children, civilians & hospitals are #NotATarget. https://t.co/oGi3RHHu17#STOPTHEWARONCHILDRENpic.twitter.com/oyjqXEUerX — Save the Children US (@SavetheChildren) March 26, 2019

Coalition airstrikes on homes, markets, hospitals, and schools in Yemen are quite common and have been throughout the war. The Saudis and their allies have consistently hit civilian targets about one-third of the time during their bombing campaign, and according to the Yemen Data Project that means that there have been well over 6,000 airstrikes like this one on civilian targets. Saada is one of the most frequently attacked parts of the country ever since the coalition illegally declared the entire area a military target in 2015. Bombing medical facilities is especially outrageous because the aid groups that support them make a point of notifying the coalition of the location of their hospitals and clinics. When the Saudi coalition blows up a hospital, clinic, or cholera treatment center in Yemen, they know very well what it is they are attacking and they bomb it anyway. It is completely unacceptable and a war crime to attack medical facilities, and it is particularly monstrous to bomb sick young children as they try to get treatment for their ailments. The coalition has been using both hunger and disease as weapons in their war on Yemen, and damaging and destroying medical facilities is part of that.

Yemen’s health care system is already groaning under the severe strain of widespread malnutrition and a new cholera outbreak, and half of the country’s medical facilities have been destroyed or damaged over the last four years. Sick and starving Yemenis that seek treatment at these facilities are always at risk of being the ones killed by Saudi coalition bombs that the U.S., U.K., and other governments sold to them. The U.S. should never have been involved in this war, and it certainly shouldn’t be aiding governments that routinely slaughter civilians in their houses and in hospitals. When you hear administration officials and members of Congress defending U.S. involvement in this war, remember that this is what they are defending.