‘Better to get killed quickly than suffer like this’: Yemeni civilians pay high price for strikes (GRAPHIC VIDEO)
A crying girl whose family was burned alive and killed in airstrikes, a wounded man who believes that a quick death is better than his suffering now, and others, grieving, desperate and injured. These scenes are what RT saw visiting a hospital in Yemen.
READ MORE: 6 children dead in Yemen as Saudi-led coalition airstrike hits school
“It was evening and we were asleep and heard planes above us,” a girl from a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, told RT, adding that the fifth plane “bombed a tanker at a petrol station close to our house.”
“The house caught fire and we were burned and wounded,” he said, “My family was burned alive and killed.”
One more patient in the hospital, Abdalkareem Abdullah, who is seen to have burns all over his body, says he demands from the international community “to allow us to be transferred abroad for medical treatment.”
As chaos deepens in #Yemen, UN expert warns of ‘worst case scenario’ #displacementhttp://t.co/aHDafP6JdVpic.twitter.com/O7aVDT8dch
— UN News Centre (@UN_News_Centre) April 8, 2015
“We suffer every day from what we see as much as from what happened to us. We are suffering and it would be easier for us to be killed in quick way than suffering like this.”
The majority of the patients in this hospital are “in critical condition,” and the prognosis for them is not positive, Ahmed Al-Shibabi, a doctor at intensive care and burns unit told RT.
“Burns of 70-90% are considered as critical all over the world. Most of the patients will die. Some already have, while others are in intensive care or in other departments,” he said.
READ MORE: Dead or alive: Al-Qaeda in Yemen offers 20kg gold for Houthi leader, ex-president
Yemen is rushing towards a humanitarian crisis. #YemenChildren#Yemenpic.twitter.com/JbwxnnmSY6
— UNICEF Yemen (@UNICEF_Yemen) April 7, 2015
In March, five Gulf States and Egypt launched airstrikes targeting Shiite Houthi rebels, who had seized the Yemeni capital and large territories in the west of the country. Jordan, Sudan, Morocco and Pakistan also expressed their willingness to join in the military operation.
Saudi Arabia took full control of Yemen’s airfields and seaports, allegedly to prevent arms coming in from abroad and intensive airstrikes targeted Houthi stronghold of Saada in the north and the port city of Aden, scene of a running battle.
The death toll in Yemen has been rising since the Saudi-led assault began, rising to at least 560 people dead and 1,768 wounded – most of them civilians – the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday. Around 100,000 people are also said to have fled their homes.
According to UNICEF, at least 74 children were killed and 44 wounded in the strikes since the operation in Yemen has begun.
“They are being killed, maimed and forced to flee their homes, their health threatened and their education interrupted,” Julian Harneis, UNICEF's representative in Yemen, said in the statement.
READ MORE: Escape from Yemen: Refugees tell RT ‘the whole city was shaking’
The Red Cross’s Marie Claire Feghali said that the humanitarian situation is worsening every day in Yemen and it as “very difficult” with “naval, air and ground routes cut off.”
Many injured do not have the infrastructure to reach local hospitals, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said.
Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, an MSF official, said that hospitals in Aden had “not received large numbers of casualties over the past few days … due to the difficulties faced in trying to reach a hospital.”
