TEHRAN – Iran has rejected “baseless” claims that an Iranian military advisor had been killed in a Saudi bombing in Yemen, saying the Islamic Republic does not have any military advisor in the impoverished country.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said allegation by a member of the ousted government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in Sana’a that an Iranian citizen had been killed in Yemen are totally wrong.
“Such baseless statements will not change the realities on the ground in Yemen about the cowardly attacks of the self-proclaimed coalition against the oppressed people of Yemen and their determination to face the aggression,” he said.
Khatibzadeh expressed regret that those who consider themselves as Yemenis are now encouraging and supporting aggressors in their oppression through a crippling blockade and war against people of their own country.
The spokesman’s remarks came after Muammar al-Iryani, Yemeni information minister in the administration of Hadi, claimed on Twitter that an Iranian military expert and nine other people were killed in a Saudi airstrike in central Yemen on Saturday.
The war-torn country has been beset by violence and chaos since 2015, when Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a devastating military campaign to reinstall the Saudi-friendly regime of Hadi in Sana’a.
The protracted war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and created the worst humanitarian catastrophe in modern history.
The Saudi regime, facing multiple setbacks in the battlefield, has recently started recruiting Daesh and Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, who have faced stiff resistance from the Yemeni military.
In addition to Sa’da and al-Hudaydah, Saudi mercenaries continue their destabilizing activities in other provinces like Ma’rib, about 120 kilometers east of Sana’a.
Over the past few months, the strategic province has been the scene of large-scale operations by Yemeni armed forces, strongly pushing back Saudi-backed mercenaries.