Chairman of Yemen’s Political Council killed in Saudi strike in Hudaydah

Rasa - President of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Saleh al-Samad, has been killed last week in a Saudi Arabia’s airstrike in the western province of Hudaydah, the council says.

News ID: 437319

Date: 23 April 2018 - 23:17

RNA - Yemen's official Saba news agency, citing a statement released by the Supreme Political Council on Monday, reported that the top political figure of the Houthi Ansarullah movement lost his life after Saudi jets bombarded his residence in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah on Thursday.

The council also conveyed its sincere condolences to the Yemeni nation for the loss of Samad, an influential figure in Yemen’s resistance against a more-than-three-year-old war imposed by Riyadh on the impoverished country.

The council, Yemen’s top governing body, also appointed Mehdi Mohammad Hussein al-Mashat as its new chairman.

According to a report by al-Arabiya, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab television news channel, the Saudi-led military coalition, which has constantly bombarded Yemen since 2015, had offered a 20-million-dollar prize for any information that could help uncover the location of Samad’s domicile.

However, the so-called military coalition has not yet commented on the incident.

Meanwhile, leader of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, in a live speech, said all aggressor countries, including the US and Saudi Arabia, were responsible for the killing of Samad, and they must await the consequences of their crime.

He also stressed that such crimes against the Yemeni nation would not break the will of his people in defending their country against the so-called military coalition.

Elsewhere in his remarks, al-Houthi said that the top figure had been killed, along with six of his companions, after their convoy was hit by a three Saudi airstrikes in al-Khamsin Street in Hudaydah.

He also called on the Yemeni people to participate in a massive demonstration, urged by Samad days prior his demise, against the Saudi-led war.

According to Press TV, the Saudi campaign was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government and against the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective administration. The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of Saudi Arabia's regional and Western allies.

The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured during the past three years.

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

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