Ceasefire in Yemen Just Another Ploy by Saudi-Led Coalition: Ansarullah
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A two-week ceasefire that was recently announced by the Saudi-led coalition waging war on Yemen is just another ploy aimed at covering up the Riyadh regime’s crimes against the Arab country, the spokesman for Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement said.
“The ceasefire announcement by Saudi Arabia is a ploy indeed as it is pressing ahead with raids on Yemen, and conducting operations on various fronts, including areas where there were no clashes at all,” Abdul-Salam said in an exclusive interview al-Jazeera television news network on Thursday night.
He added, “The Saudi ceasefire is just a political and media maneuver. It pursues more than one goal. It seeks to undercut the ongoing serious negotiations with the United Nations and burnish the blood-stained image of Saudi Arabia in this critical moment when the world is facing the coronavirus pandemic.”
Abdul-Salam underlined that the sensible decision for the Saudi-led coalition would be to stop the military aggression on Yemen, and lift the crippling blockade, Press TV reported.
The Ansarullah spokesman went on to say that Saudi Arabia’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire in Yemen is inconsistent with the plans being followed by world countries to fight the coronavirus outbreak since the period will not provide the Yemenis with the opportunity to take proper measure to avoid COVID-19 epidemic.
“Yemenis are dying of blockade and epidemics… There can be no humanitarian truce as long as the (Saudi-led) siege continues,” Abdul-Salam pointed out.
Earlier on Thursday, the spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree dismissed the Saudi-led alliance’s claim that it had suspended hostilities in Yemen.
Saree wrote in a post published on his official Twitter page that the Saudi-led forces had stepped up their offensives and attacks across various parts of the impoverished Arab country over the past few hours.
“Saudi and Emirati forces have carried out at least five large-scale airstrikes on Yemeni areas near the kingdom's southwestern border region of Najran since the early hours of this morning,” he noted.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring the country’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crush Ansarullah.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.