News / Interviews

Riyadh’s crimes aim to separate Yemenis from resistance: Analyst

Monday, 23 April 2018 12:51 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 23 April 2018 12:54 PM ]

An analyst believes Saudi Arabia is trying to “exert maximum casualty and pain” on the Yemeni population in an attempt to separate the people from the “resistance movement.”

The comments came after Saudi airstrikes targeted a wedding ceremony in Yemen’s northwestern province of Hajjah, killing 33 people and injuring 55 others.

The Saudi jets also carried out raids on ambulances transporting the casualties to local hospitals.

“To target civilians is bad enough but to wait for aid to actually reach the site of the attack and then come at it again is absolutely harrowing and I do not think that even Washington or London could actually justify what has happened. They are going to try of course but I do not see how they could because it is quite evident that it is a war crime,” Catherine Shakdam, director of Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, told Press TV in an interview on Monday.

The Saudi aggression was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government of president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and against the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement that 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.