CAIRO -- Arab foreign ministers, with the exception of Lebanon's, condemned in a Sunday statement what they called Iran's meddling in Arab affairs.
The ministers accused Iran of breaking international agreements by intentionally failing to protect Saudi Arabia's diplomatic posts in a statement issued after a closed emergency meeting.
Lebanon, which has a large Shiite population and is home to powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah, was the only dissenting voice. Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil said in a statement that his country had rejected the statement because it also condemned Hezbollah over alleged interference in Bahrain.
Protesters in Tehran stormed the Saudi Embassy and a Saudi consulate elsewhere in the country after Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shiite cleric and opposition leader, earlier this month.
Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister who led the emergency meeting, said the embassy attack "took place under the nose and within the earshot of security forces."
Saudi's Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said Arab nations would "confront" the Islamic Republic if it does not change its ways, without elaborating. Arab League Chief Nabil Elaraby said the region's foreign ministers will discuss the "steps" they can take against Iran in future meetings over the next two months. Al-Jubeir added that there was no real timeline for such measures.
"We don't want conflict. We don't want war," the Al Nahyan told reporters.
Separately, Pakistan's army chief also vowed a strong response should Saudi Arabia's territorial integrity be threatened.
Gen. Raheel Sharif made the remarks Sunday in a statement after Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman met with him in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, adjacent to the capital.
Salman earlier arrived in Islamabad, making him the second top Saudi official to visit Pakistan in a week amid growing tension with Iran over al-Nimr's execution.
Al-Jubeir visited Pakistan a couple of days ago.
Sunday's Arab League gathering was requested by Saudi Arabia to discuss the attacks. The ensuing crisis has seen Saudi Arabia and several Arab states cut or downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran.
"Iran doesn't have qualms and doesn't hesitate to using the sectarian card as a way to dominate the region, and interfering in the internal affairs of Arab countries," Al Nahyan said at the opening ceremony.
In the closing news conference, al-Jubeir stressed that Iran has no right to speak out for Shiite minorities in the region because at the end of the day they are Arab citizens.
"The attacks came after inciting statements from Iranian officials against the kingdom," al-Jubeir told fellow ambassadors in opening remarks before the session was closed to reporters. "What happened was not because of the execution of a Saudi citizen," the minister said, referring to al-Nimr.
He added that tensions with Iran only began after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which overthrew the secular Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought to power a conservative Shiite Islamic regime.
The kingdom's move comes despite Iran's recent letter to the U.N. saying Tehran has no desire to escalate tensions and that the Saudis must make a "crucial choice" -- either promote sectarian hatred or promote good neighborliness and regional stability.
Yemen Hospital Struck
A hospital in northern Yemen supported by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders was struck by ordnance early Sunday, killing at least four people and causing the collapse of several buildings, the organization said in a statement.
It was the third time in three months that a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen had been damaged or destroyed. At least 10 people were injured in the latest attack, including three of the group's staff. Two of the staff members are in critical condition. All staff members and patients have been moved to another hospital also supported by Doctors Without Borders.
The medical charity said it could not confirm which party in Yemen's civil war had fired what it called a "projectile," but said that "planes were seen flying over the facility at the time."
A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia controls the skies over Yemen and has carried out thousands of bombing runs in the country since entering the war last March. At least one other projectile fell near the hospital, Doctors Without Borders said.
The hospital, called Shiara, is in the northern Saada province, in the Razeh district near the border with Saudi Arabia. Fierce fighting along the frontier between Saudi troops and Yemen's Houthi rebels has devastated many border towns and displaced thousands of people, according to aid workers. Attacks on clinics and hospitals have left the province with only one major medical facility, forcing people to travel hours to receive even basic treatment.
In October, coalition warplanes destroyed a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Haydan district, near Razeh. Then, in early December, the coalition bombed one of the group's mobile clinics in the southern Taiz province. The Shiara hospital was bombed previously, in September, before Doctors Without Borders became involved with it, the group said.
"All warring parties, including the Saudi-led coalition, are regularly informed of the GPS coordinates of the medical facilities where MSF works," Raquel Ayora, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, said in the statement. MSF is the French abbreviation for the group.
"We are in constant dialogue with them to ensure that they understand the severity of the humanitarian consequences of the conflict and the need to respect the provision of medical services," she said. "There is no way that anyone with the capacity to carry out an airstrike or launch a rocket would not have known that the Shiara Hospital was a functioning health facility providing critical services and supported by MSF."
The charity operates in eight Yemeni provinces at a time when many foreign aid groups and even United Nations personnel have been evacuated. It has been working at the Shiara hospital since November.
The Saudi-led coalition is fighting to restore Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was driven from power last year by the Houthi rebels, a northern group. More than 2,800 civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, with the majority of people killed by coalition bombing, according to the United Nations.
The Saudi-led coalition, which is backed by the United States and Britain, came under renewed criticism last week for dropping cluster munitions on Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, killing at least one person.
Human Rights Watch said Sunday that the Houthis had detained dozens of political opponents and journalists in Sanaa, which the rebels control. Some of the opponents had vanished with their whereabouts a mystery to their families, the group said. Many of the detainees belonged to Islah, an Islamist political party that opposes the Houthis, Human Rights Watch said.
Information for this article was contributed by Nour Youssef, Brian Rohan and Ahmed Al-Haj of The Associated Press and by Kareem Fahim and Shuaib Almosawa of The New York Times.
A Section on 01/11/2016