Iran summons Saudi charge d’affaires over Yemen aid blockage

Rasa - Iran’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Saudi Arabia’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to protest against Riyadh’s interception of another Iranian aid flight to war-wracked Yemen.

News ID: 2430

Date: 30 April 2015 - 19:05

RNA - According to Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s most senior diplomat in Tehran was summoned after Saudi fighter jets prevented an Iranian plane, which was carrying medical aid, from landing in the international airport in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.

At the meeting between Saudi envoy and the director of the foreign ministry’s first department of the Persian Gulf, the Iranian official strongly protested at the Saudi move, saying that it was a dangerous move that threatened the lives of Iran’s Red Crescent personnel and the plane’s crew.

The Iranian official emphasized Iran will not accept the move that endangered the people who were heading for Sana’a to provide Yemenis with medical aid.

He also called on Riyadh to immediately halt the inhumane siege of the Yemeni people and its unfair airstrikes on the Arab country, saying intra-Yemeni dialog is the only way to end the current political deadlock in the Arab country.

The blocking of Iran’s civilian aircraft came just days after Saudi fighter jets intercepted an Iranian airplane carrying humanitarian aid and medicine as well as injured Yemenis, who had been treated in Iran, and prevented it from entering the Yemeni airspace. The plane was forced to turn back although it had obtained the necessary permission to fly along the Oman-Yemen route.

Saudi Arabia launched its aerial campaign against Yemen on March 26 - without a United Nations mandate - in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

On April 21, Riyadh announced the end of the first phase of its unlawful military operation, which claimed the lives of over 1,000 people. However, the airstrikes have continued, with Saudi bombers targeting different areas across the country.

The Saudi aggression against Yemen has claimed the lives of more than 100 children over the past month, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

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