Riyadh, August 16: Yemen’s oppositionists allege that a five-year-old military campaign launched against them has been orchestrated by Saudi Arabia.
An opposition official, Yahya al-Houthi said on Saturday that Saudi Arabia has gone so far as to deploy warplanes in Yemen to bomb opposition strongholds, Fars News reported.
“In 2004 [Yemeni] President Ali Abdullah Saleh attacked our brothers with the help of Saudi Arabia. Saudi warplanes were used in that strike,” he said.
Al-Houthi said that the same practice has been used in Sanaa’s ongoing crackdown on Shia groups which was launched on Monday in the northern areas of Yemen.
Yemen’s government officials accuse opposition groups of trying to reinstall a religious reign, toppled by a 1962 military coup in northern Yemen.
In addition, government officials on August 13 announced 6 conditions for halting their offensive.
These included the opposition’s withdrawal from all districts of Sa’ada and mountainous sites and giving up the military hardware they had seized from the army.
—–Agencies