Iran’s Envoy to Yemen Returning Home for COVID Treatment
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said the country’s ambassador to Yemen is returning home to get treatment for the coronavirus.
In a tweet on Saturday, Khatibzadeh said Hassan Irloo needed urgent medical attention days after contracting the infectious disease.
The spokesman also expressed gratitude to the countries that helped the envoy’s transfer to his homeland for treatment, praising their assistance as “humanitarian act.”
“By the grace of God and with the help of some countries in the region, Mr. Irloo is being transferred to the country,” he said, Press TV reported.
Irloo officially began his diplomatic mission to Yemen in November 2020, in defiance of the United States’ anger at the two countries’ developing relations.
The United States added him to the list of its sanctions a month later.
The US has played a key role in Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen, which has caused the world’s worst humanitarian disaster in the impoverished Middle Eastern country.
Saudi Arabia launched the war in March 2015 with the goal of bringing former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s government back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
According to a UN report released last month, the death toll from the war will reach 377,000, including those killed as a result of indirect and direct causes, by the end of 2021.