CAIRO (Dispatches) – Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has criticized a new U.S.-led naval patrol in the Red Sea following a series of retaliatory attacks by Yemeni armed forces in a waterway.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Ansarullah movement’s chief negotiator and spokesman, said late Friday that the U.S. move in the Red Sea, which comes amid a cease-fire in the country’s Saudi-led war, contradicts Washington’s claim of supporting the U.N.-brokered truce.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Navy announced plans to establish a new “multinational task force” to patrol the Red Sea — a vital shipping lane for both cargo and the global energy supplies.
The strategic sea runs from Egypt’s Suez Canal in the north, down through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the south that separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula.
“The American move in the Red Sea in light of a humanitarian and military truce in Yemen contradicts Washington’s claim that it supports the truce, rather it only seeks to perpetuate the state of aggression and siege on Yemen,” Abdul-Salam tweeted.
The ceasefire agreement between the Saudi-led coalition that has been invading and occupying the war-ravaged country since 2015 and Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement was mediated by the United Nations on April 2.
Under the truce agreement, the Riyadh-led coalition agreed to end its attacks on Yemen with the goal of changing Yemen’s power structure in favor of the country’s former Saudi-allied officials.
The foreign aggressors also agreed to end the crippling humanitarian siege it has been enforcing against the people of Yemen in the protracted 7-year war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the truce “must be a first step to ending Yemen’s devastating war,” while urging the warring parties to build on the opportunity to “resume an inclusive and comprehensive Yemeni political process.”
The deal stipulates halting offensive military operations, including cross-border attacks, and allowing fuel-laden ships to enter Yemen’s lifeline al-Hudaydah port and commercial flights in and out of the airport in the capital Sana’a “to predetermined destinations in the region.”
Speaking on Friday, Hussein Al-Ezzi, deputy foreign minister in Yemen’s National Salvation Government, said the Saudi-led coalition “doesn’t respect its obligations to the truce”.
He added that the coalition was “still obstructing” flights to the Sana’a International Airport in Yemen’s capital and “detaining fuel ships” that are headed to the impoverished country.