On 30 December 1935, a Swedish Red Cross field hospital was destroyed in an airstrike by the Regia Aeronautica (Royal Italian Air Force) in Dolo, Ethiopia, killing between 22 and 30 people, mostly Ethiopians.

Following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935, the Swedish Red Cross mobilized a field hospital to send to Ethiopia under the supervision of physician Fride Hylander.

The Red Cross' plans for the hospital was that it would be stationed in Harrar, away from the fighting, however, the Ethiopian government directed it be split into two and both elements moved to the front lines, an order to which the Swedish officials acquiesced.

[8] Following the airstrike, Italian aircraft made a second pass over the site, dropping leaflets lettered in Amharic, signed by Graziani, which read: You have transgressed the laws of kingdoms and nations by killing a captive airman by beheading him.

[11] As soon as the news reached Sweden, Prince Carl, Duke of Västergötland and president of the Swedish Red Cross, protested this, while King Gustaf V rushed back to his country house to chair an emergency meeting, saying he was deeply shocked.

An editorial by the pro-fascist Il Giornale d'Italia was similarly dismissive, asking if Italy "should order her soldiers to put corks on the points of their bayonets and her aviators to fill their bombs with cologne water".

Several days following the attack, Italy expressed its official regret to Sweden for the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross hospital, but warned against narrating tendentious versions of the incident.

[16][17] In the 90th session of the League of Nations the Swedish and Ethiopian delegates protested against the Italian air raids targeting Red Cross hospitals and asked for their immunity.