SANA’A (Dispatches) – The Sana’a-based government in Yemen has announced that 643 people have been killed and wounded in its areas of control since the beginning of this year as a direct result of mines and cluster bombs used by Saudi Arabia in the war that is in its eighth year, Al-Mayadeen, has reported.
The government’s Executive Mine Action Centre said that, in October alone, “Eighteen people were killed and 28 were injured due to mines, cluster bombs and other remnants of munitions left behind by Saudi-led coalition aggression.”
Last Thursday, the UN announced that 95 people were killed and 248 were wounded in Yemen, because of landmines and unexploded ordnance during the six-month UN-brokered truce that expired in early October. The truce has not been renewed.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s popular resistance Ansarullah movement has warned about fresh malicious intentions by the United States and the UK in the war-ravaged country.
Ali al-Qahoum, a member of Ansarullah’s Political Bureau, raised the alarm during an exclusive interview with Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network.
There is “a direct U.S. military presence in Yemen, and an influx of U.S. forces, specifically in Hadhramaut,” he said, referring to Yemen’s biggest province, which spans from the country’s center towards its eastern areas.
“There is also an influx of British forces into al-Mahrah,” he added, referring to Yemen’s second-largest province that neighbors Hadharamaut to the east.
The U.S. and the UK were preparing for a fresh round of escalation in Yemen, he further warned without elaborating.
The Western countries have been contributing heavily and unabatedly to a war of aggression that a Saudi-led coalition has been waging against Yemen since 2015.
The coalition has been seeking, unsuccessfully though, to restore Yemen’s power to the country’s former Western- and Riyadh-aligned officials. The war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Washington and London have been providing the coalition with direct arms, logistical, and political support, including through outfitting it with precision-guided ammunitions that the Saudi-led forces have been using amply against Yemen’s civilian population.
Al-Qahoum said new U.S. and British military delegations had arrived in Yemen earlier this week.
Reporting on Wednesday, Yemen Press Agency cited informed local sources as saying that Hadhramaut’s Provincial Governor, Mabkhout bin Madi, had held a face-to-face meeting with the U.S. delegation in his office.
The Ansarullah official, however, asserted that despite the Western states’ apparent preparations for a new flare-up in Yemen, “the Yemenis are ready to defend their dignity and every inch of their country.”
“Ansarullah has military capabilities that preserve Yemen’s sovereignty and independence,” he added.