SANA’A (Dispatches) – Unnecessary amputations were performed on young children and others injured during the Saudi-led war in Yemen at private hospitals funded by a Saudi regime aid agency, according to doctors and health officials.
An investigation by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) for Middle East Eye raises serious questions about dozens of operations at three hospitals in the southwestern frontline city of Taiz between 2016 and 2018.
All three hospitals - Al-Buraihy, Al-Safwa and Al-Rawda - received financial support from Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief).
The investigation, backed by testimonies from doctors, health officials and patients and their families, found that proper procedures were not followed by medical staff authorizing and performing the operations.
It discovered that the qualifications of one foreign doctor involved in at least 44 amputations were not recognized in his own country.
And it found that KSrelief continued to fund two hospitals even after concerns were raised by local officials and through KSrelief’s own monitoring of their work.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases.
Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees, however, have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
In the latest developments in the country, Yemeni sources reported that the country’s army and popular committees continued to advance in Ma’rib province and took control of the city of al-Juba and surrounding areas in the province.
According to the reports, Yemeni army forces and popular committees took control of al-Juba city center and surrounding areas and forces affiliated with ousted and fugitive Yemeni former president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and Saudi-affiliated Al-Islah Party fled the country.
A senior member of the political bureau of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement says the liberation of the strategic central province of Ma’rib will mark an important “milestone” in the battles to expel the occupiers and retake the country’s energy resources seized by the Saudi-led military coalition and its allied militants.
“The liberation of Mari’b will have significant impacts on [efforts to] expel occupation forces and return oil wealth” to the country, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network on Tuesday night.
The official said the Saudi-led coalition of aggressors runs a key command center in Ma’rib, which is tasked with directing the operations against the Yemeni armed forces and “that is why the liberation of the rest of Ma’rib constitutes a major objective for Yemen and will mark a milestone and the start of a new phase” in the Yemeni army’s liberation struggles.