Iran on Tuesday strongly condemned the recent Saudi assault on Yemen's residential areas which killed and wounded dozens of civilians, including women and children, regretting that Riyadh continues to insist on its strategic mistake.
“Continued bombardment of residential complexes by Saudi Arabia which comes despite the Sana’a National Salvation government’s initiative to stop missile launches into Saudi Arabia in return for an end to the Saudi bombardment, that has also been welcomed by the international community, shows that the aggressors still keep beating on drums of war and insist on their strategic mistake in using a military approach in Yemen,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi stated on Tuesday after Saudi air raids killed and wounded tens of people in Southwestern and Western Yemen.
The latest Saudi airstrikes killed at least 16 people, 11 of them women and children, in Southwestern Yemen. The aerial bombardment targeted a residential building in the province of Dhale on Tuesday.
On Monday, Saudi warplanes bombed a mosque in Amran province in Western Yemen, killing seven people, including children and women. The victims were from the same family and had taken refuge in the mosque in order to avoid Saudi assaults.
An Ansarullah official on Friday stated that the movement would stop targeting Saudi territories with drones and ballistic missiles, hoping Riyadh would reciprocate the gesture. The United Nations welcomed the proposal by Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, but Saudi Arabia has so far refused to accept the offer.
It came more than a week after the Yemeni forces launched retaliatory drone raids on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. Attacks by 10 Yemeni drones on the key oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais on September 14 shut down about 50 percent of the kingdom’s crude and gas production, cutting the state oil giant’s crude oil supply by around 5.7 million barrels per day.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures. Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands.
France, the United States, the Uinted Kingdom and some other Western countries have faced criticisms over arms sales to the Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose aggression against Yemen has affected 28 million people and caused what the United Nations calls “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world". According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.
The total number of reported fatalities in Yemen has passed the 91,000 mark over the past four and a half years, the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) announced in late August.
Fars News Agency
