A/HRC/18/21 have added to the suffering of the population.14 Businesses have been forced to close or lay off thousands of workers. The Mission was informed that waste collection vehicles in Ta’izz had been stolen, resulting in unhygienic conditions throughout the city. 55. In the Ta’izz countryside, armed persons have allegedly looted farm equipment, and farmers are suffering from the shortage of fuel which hinders them from pumping water or transporting produce to markets. 56. Several interlocutors considered that the disruptions in telecommunications, power, fuel supply and movement were devised by the Government as a form of collective punishment, with the objective of blaming the opposition for ruining the country and harming the population. Conversely, Government officials blame the opposition for sabotaging an oil pipeline and a power line in order to discredit the Government. H. Right to health 57. The Mission was informed by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization that every effort was being made to ensure that access to health care for all was protected, and that the distribution of medicines, even in areas outside of Government control, was preserved. Yet, electricity outages have debilitated the health sector: many medical facilities either do not have generators or enough fuel to function adequately. Interlocutors stressed that life-support machines requiring reliable sources of energy could no longer operate. Some medical interlocutors attributed the death of at least 21 patients to such outages. The fuel and power crises have also obstructed the delivery of vaccines and, with movement restricted, medical staff have been hindered from accessing rural areas. Some expressed the view that many children would be denied early immunizations if the situation continued. 58. A number of documented instances indicate that Government security forces had prevented wounded demonstrators from accessing hospitals or turned away doctors and ambulances. In Sana’a, the Mission met with four female doctors who recounted that, Central Security Forces had stopped the ambulance in which they were travelling to a hospital, and detained them for several hours. Another doctor testified that the ambulance in which he was treating patients wounded in a demonstration was shot at, while an ambulance driver testified that security personnel shot at his ambulance, which resulted in the killing of two men, then abducted him and seized the ambulance. The latter two incidents occurred in Sana’a. 59. The Mission was briefed about the 29 May 2011 events in Ta’izz, during which the field hospital at Freedom Square, which is located in a mosque, and Al-Safwa hospital – both of which the Mission visited – were reportedly raided and vandalized. In both cases, vital equipment was destroyed or looted, and patients on life support were summarily expelled without adequate precautions, putting them at great risk. I. Right to education 60. Many schools in Yemen’s main cities have been forced to close for prolonged periods of time, either because teachers or students are on strike or because students have damaged the schools and attempted to force other students to join the protests. In particular, the Ministry of Education buildings in Abyan, Ta’izz and Aden had been attacked, with 14 The Mission was repeatedly told that its visit coincided with a significant improvement in the power service, which apparently ended as soon as it left. 13