Al Houthi hospital raid proof sent to UN
NORTH KOREA TRIED TO SELL ARMS TO YEMEN REBELS, REPORT SAYS
Saudi Arabia has urged the UN Security Council to take immediate action against Yemen’s Al Houthis over the Iran-allied militia’s involvement in a deadly attack on a hospital in the western city of Hodeida.
The kingdom sent through its ambassador to the UN, Abdallah Al Mouallimi, evidence showing that Al Houthis had hit the hospital and other civilian sites with mortar shells, reports said yesterday.
In its letter to the international body, Saudi Arabia demanded “immediate measures” to disarm Al Houthis and implement relevant UN resolutions, according to the report. At least 55 civilians were killed and 170 injured in Thursday’s attack, according to the Red Cross.
Colonel Turki Al Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition which is fighting Al Houthis, blamed the Iranaligned militia for firing mortar shells at the hospital and a fish market in Hodeida.
In Riyadh, Energy Minister Khalid Al Faleh said the country has decided to resume its oil shipments through the Red Sea’s key Bab Al Mandab Strait.
Meanwhile, a UN report said North Korea “attempted to supply small arms and light weapons and other military equipment via foreign intermediaries” to Libya, Yemen and Sudan.
The report named Syrian arms trafficker Hussain Al Ali who offered “a range of conventional arms, and in some cases ballistic missiles to armed groups in Yemen and Libya” that were produced in North Korea. With Ali acting as a go-between, a “protocol of cooperation” between Al Houthi rebels and North Korea was negotiated in 2016 in Syria that provided for a “vast array of military equipment”.
One million mines planted by the Al Houthi militia in Yemen in three years led to the deaths of 1,194 civilians, including 216 children, a senior official at the Saudi Project for Landmine Clearance (Masam) said.
Masam aims to make Yemen landmine-free to protect civilians and safeguard the delivery of urgent humanitarian supplies.
Speaking to the Emirates News Agency (WAM), Osama Al Qasibi, Masam Director-General, said: “Our teams have managed to detect and remove 919 mines and explosive devices in Taiz, Red Sea Coast, Beihan, Osailan, Saada, Shabwa and Marib, in two weeks after the launch of the project.”
Iran-made bombs
“Most of these are internationally banned anti-vehicle and anti-personnel mines that originate from difference sources, in addition to 288 locally devised or Iran-made mines,” he added. The coup perpetrators are developing anti-vehicle mines and turning them into anti-personnel explosive devices as part of their sectarian scheme to intimidate and terrorise the civilians and feed their expansionist plans, Al Qasibi noted.
Masam, launched by King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre on June 25, tackles the plague of landmines left behind by Iran-backed Al Houthis as they retreated amid battlefield losses.
Landmines constitute a major impediment to social and economic development efforts and expose citizens to potentially fatal risk for generations to come, Masam said.
The programme launched by Masam also strives to help the Yemeni people to overcome many tragedies caused by the deployment of the landmines, and to enable the country to clear the landmines independently.