Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement announced it will stop launching retaliatory missile and drone attacks against positions inside Saudi Arabia if the Saudi-led military coalition, which has been pounding impoverished Yemen for the past several years, reciprocates the initiative in kind. RNA - “We are announcing that we will stop targeting Saudi territories with drones and ballistic missiles and all kinds of targeting, and we will wait for the favor to be returned with a similar or even better one by (Saudi Arabia) announcing a halt to all sorts of air strikes against Yemeni territories,” Al-Masirah television network quoted the Ansarullah’s President of the Supreme Political Council in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, Mahdi al-Mashat, as saying.
Mashat’s comments came almost a week after Houthi fighters conducted drone and missile strikes on two of Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, in Abqaiq and Khurais. The attacks led to a halt in about 50 percent of the Arab kingdom’s crude and gas production, causing a surge in oil prices.
The Houthi top official also called for serious negotiations to be held among all parties involved in the persisting conflict.
“I call on all parties from different sides of the war to engage seriously in genuine negotiations that can lead to a comprehensive national reconciliation that does not exclude anyone,” Mashat stated, while boasting the Houthi movement’s rapidly improved military capabilities and “significant advancement” in air and missile defense.
He also warned that that the Houthis “would not hesitate to launch a period of great pain” if their call for peace was ignored.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures. Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands.
France, the United States, the Uinted Kingdom and some other Western countries have faced criticisms over arms sales to the Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose aggression against Yemen has affected 28 million people and caused what the United Nations calls “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world". According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.
The total number of reported fatalities in Yemen has passed the 91,000 mark over the past four and a half years, the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) announced in late August.
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