Saudis warn of strikes on Yemen ports
CAIRO: The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen believes the use by Houthi forces of two ports as military bases would turn them into legitimate military targets, coalition spokesman Brigadier General Turki al-Maliki said on Saturday.
The ports of Hodeidah and Salif are controlled by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and the Saudi-led coalition has said the Houthis use them as launching points for military and marine operations.
“We do not want to target the ports ... We want to reach a comprehensive political solution,” Gen al-Maliki told a press conference, but added that if the Houthis use any civilian sites they forfeit immunity thus making the ports targets.
In what appeared to be a denial of the coalition accusations, Houthi deputy foreign minister Hussein al-Ezzi said that a United Nations mission has been carrying out daily and weekly visits to the ports of Hodeidah province since the Stockholm agreement, Al-Masirah TV reported on Saturday after the coalition press conference.
The agreement was signed in 2018 between Yemen’s warring parties, aiming to keep the ports operational.
Air and sea access to Houthi-held areas is controlled by the Saudi-led coalition, which intervened in Yemen in early 2015 after the movement ousted the internationally recognised government from Sana’a.
Houthi forces last week hijacked a United Arab Emirates-flagged cargo vessel that they said was engaged in “hostile acts”, but which the alliance said was carrying hospital equipment, part of a struggle to assert control over imports into the country.