Official Condemns Saudi-Led Mercenaries for Plundering Yemen’s National Assets
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Yemeni nation will not remain silent over the incessant looting of the war-torn country’s natural resources by the mercenaries of the Saudi-led coalition, a senior official said.
“We denounce the (Saudi-led) mercenaries for plundering the Yemeni people’s national assets and depositing the proceeds in a Saudi National Bank (SNB) account,” Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, remarked on Wednesday.
Stressing that the Yemeni nation lacks the most basic services, the official said the current freeze on the salaries of government employees, owing to the brutal Saudi-led aggression and unjust siege, can be resolved through oil revenues.
“The revenues of oil and gas looted by mercenaries are fairly enough to pay the salaries of civil servants and pensioners, and promote development,” he noted.
Mashat called on the United Nations and the international community to pressure the Saudi-led coalition forces to fulfill their commitments under the Stockholm Agreement and facilitate payment of the salaries of all government employees and pensioners.
He further stressed that the Yemeni people "will not remain silent about the ongoing looting of their wealth, whose profits are converted by mercenaries into companies and real estate abroad.”
In a fresh development on Wednesday, the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) said the Saudi-led coalition has seized another Yemen-bound ship carrying fuel in blatant violation of the recently-extended ceasefire brokered by the UN.
The fuel ship, Symphony, was seized while carrying tens of thousands of tons of diesel oil, Yemen’s official Saba news agency reported, citing a statement by the YPC spokesman Essam al-Mutawakel.
The company added that the ship was impounded despite being inspected and cleared for the port call by the United Nations.
The warring sides in the Arab country agreed on August 2 to renew the two-month truce.
“This truce extension includes a commitment from the parties to intensify negotiations to reach an expanded truce agreement as soon as possible,” United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said in a statement.
Grundberg had been pushing for a six-month truce with additional measures, according to Reuters, but both Yemen’s ousted Saudi-backed regime based in Aden and led by the Presidential Council and the popular Ansarullah resistance movement had reservations about the implementation of the truce.
Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states.
The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
