SANA’A (Dispatches) – Yemeni
officials have denounced a vote by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to expand a targeted UN arms embargo on several leaders of the popular Ansarullah resistance movement to the whole group.
The 15-member body adopted on Monday the controversial anti-Ansarullah resolution, proposed by the United Arab Emirates, by 11 votes in favor to none against, with 4 abstentions.
The resolution strongly condemns counterattacks by Yemeni fighters, including those on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and demands their immediate cessation.
In a post on his Twitter account, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee, criticized the decision for ignoring the “crimes” committed by the Saudi-led coalition, stressing that any arms embargo that does not apply to the Western-backed alliance “had no value.”
If the goal is to secure justice, the deliberate targeting of Yemen by the U.S.-Saudi-Emirati aggressor coalition and its war crimes should have been the reason for a ban on weapons, he said.
He also noted that after selling arms to the Persian Gulf countries, the Americans, the British, etc. test the effectiveness of their weaponry by killing Yemeni children.
Similarly, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, said the UNSC’s decision to extend the arms embargo imposed on Yemen and deprive it of its right to self-defense indicates that the world needs a new order based on justice.
In another development, the Yemeni armed forces have intercepted and targeted a U.S.-built Boeing Insitu ScanEagle spy drone belonging to the Saudi-led military coalition as it was flying over Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah.
The spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a post on his Twitter page on Monday that Yemeni air defense units shot down the unmanned aerial vehicle as it was carrying out hostile acts in the sky over the Harad district.
The Yemeni armed forces also made fresh territorial gains against Saudi-backed mercenaries in the country’s oil-producing province of Ma’rib, seizing control over a strategic region southwest of the provincial capital.
Yemen Press Agency, citing local sources requesting anonymity, reported that the Yemeni troops and their allies have been engaged in fierce clashes with Saudi-sponsored militants loyal to Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi over the past two days.
Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and several Western states.
In a latest move, the United Arab Emirates has deployed mercenaries of various nationalities at al-Rayyan International Airport, which is Yemen’s third-largest, in the country’s southeastern province of Hadhramaut.
Al-Khabar al-Yemeni news website, citing informed sources, reported that Jordanian, Sudanese, and American mercenaries have been deployed at the airport, which was reopened in April last year after being suspended for nearly six years.