SANA’A (Dispatches) – An aviation official with the Yemeni government has dismissed media reports about reopening of the Sana’a airport or lifting of a ban on the passenger planes.
Speaking to Tasnim on Friday, the Yemeni official denied reports circulated by the media outlets and social networks that the airport of Sana’a has reopened and the ban on the civil flights has been lifted.
The source said the aviation organization of Yemen has not received anything about the outcome of political consultations between the Yemeni government delegation and the Saudi-led military coalition, mediated by Oman and the United Nations, that might result in the removal of ban on the civil flights as the first constructive step.
The source also noted that the Saudi-led coalition has kept the blockade on all Yemeni airports.
Meanwhile, a high-ranking Yemeni official has condemned the U.S. decision to impose new sanctions on Yemen, saying the measure falls within a systematic plot aimed at suffocating the impoverished state’s economy.
“America prioritizes the option of war in Yemen at the same time as pretending to be supportive of peace. The imposition of sanctions on the pretext of securing peace represents an obstacle to the latter,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, tweeted Friday.
He said the punitive measures against the Yemeni private sector following bans on the country’s central bank plus airstrikes on factories and production plants, starvation of Yemenis through a blockade as well as halt to the payment of civil service salaries are all crimes, which fall within a systematic plot to exterminate the Yemeni economy.
The U.S. Treasury on Thursday slapped sanctions on a money network which it accused of funding Ansarullah - a popular movement which is at the center of a national government administrating the country from capital Sana’a.
In another development, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior member of Ansarullah’s political bureau, told Lebanese al-Mayadeen television news network on Thursday evening that Saudi forces and their mercenaries are legitimate targets for Yemen as long as the atrocious military campaign and brutal siege against his country continue.
“We warn the aggressor countries that the presence of their forces in Yemen will subject them to attacks. Death is the destiny of foreign troops deployed to Yemen,” Bukhaiti said.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah.
The Saudi war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. The war has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases across the Arab country.