People in Yemen have taken to the streets of three cities in the country to mark the first anniversary of the assassination of a senior official from the Houthi Ansarullah movement by Saudi Arabia. RNA - The protesters held rallies in Sana’a, Sa’ada, and Hudaydah on Friday to pay tribute to Saleh al-Samad, the chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council.
Carrying Yemeni flags and Samad’s photos, the demonstrators condemned the Saudi-led war on their country and vowed to continue their resistance against the aggression.
Samad was killed in Saudi airstrikes that targeted his residence in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah on April 19, 2018. The Council that he headed before his death was formed by the Houthi movement and the General People’s Congress Party in 2016 to run state affairs because the country’s then-government had fled amid popular discontent.
The Yemeni army on Tuesday also unveiled a domestically-designed and -manufactured ballistic missile to mark the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Samad.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its allies launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and eliminating the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.
More than four years later, they have achieved neither goal.
According to a December 2018 report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Yemenis since January 2016.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN said in a report in December 2018 that over 24 million Yemenis were in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.
A number of Western countries, the United States and Britain in particular, are also complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.