France Involved in Deadly Market Attack in NW Yemen: Ansarullah
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A member of the Supreme Political Council of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah Movement accused France of having links to a deadly market attack in country’s northwest.
“The French actions left people dead and injured as a result of the artillery bombardment of the Al-Raqu market in the border administrative region of Munabih in the province of Saada. The use of French weapons and experience in the aggression is a crime, which is ignored by the French justice system in return for arms deals”, Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, member of the Supreme Political Council, wrote on his Twitter page Wednesday, Sputnik reported.
Yemeni media on Tuesday reported that at least 17 people had been killed as a result of the Saudi army’s shelling of a market in the Yemeni northwestern province of Saada.
In spring, French media reported that parties to the Yemeni conflict were using the weapons, produced in the European country. The reports emerged several months after French Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly told the France Inter broadcaster that she was not aware of any French weapons being used directly in Yemen.
A recent research by Oxfam also indicated that the value of UK arms sold to the Saudi-led military coalition waging war on Yemen increased by 45 percent over the past five years despite the introduction of an international treaty to limit the sale of weapons.
Since January 2015, £6.4bn worth of UK arms have been sold to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their coalition partners involved in Yemen's war, according to Oxfam.
The total compares to £4.4bn worth of UK weapons sales approved to the same eight countries in the five years up to December 2014.
In June 2019, the UK government suspended arms to Saudi Arabia and its partners after the Court of Appeal found it had approved the export of weapons without assessing whether the Saudi-led coalition had broken international law.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement.