Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has stopped admitting patients to its clinic in Yemen’s second city Aden after staff were threatened and a patient was kidnapped and killed, the group said Thursday.
A group of armed men stormed the hospital in Aden, controlled by the Yemeni government, and threatened guards and staff at MSF’s emergency trauma hospital, the organization said in a statement.
The gunmen then kidnapped a patient who had been admitted the day before. The patient was found dead on a street in the al-Mansoura district, MSF said.
“Following this incident, we have no choice but to suspend the admission of patients until further notice,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF’s program manager for Yemen.
A police commander in Aden, who requested anonymity as he was not authorized to brief the press, said the patient had been wounded in a battle between rival armed groups and hospitalized at the MSF clinic.
His body was found on the grounds of a local school, the commander said.
The southern port city Aden has served as the seat of Yemen’s beleaguered government since early 2015, when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled the capital Sanaa in the face of a rebel takeover.
In March 2015, as the Huthi rebels closed in on Aden and Hadi went into exile, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in support of the government, triggering what the U.N. calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The government exercises only limited authority, even in areas that have been retaken from the rebels.
Many of the country’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed and the country is heavily dependent on aid groups for medical care.
In November, MSF announced it had suspended its work in Daleh, a region inland from the Red Sea port of Hodeida, in the face of multiple security incidents directly targeting patients and staff.
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The situation in war-torn Yemen, already facing the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world, is getting even worse, the United Nations warned in February.
“The humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the worst in the world,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a statement.