YEMEN Press Agency

Saudi Arabia places occupied areas south Yemen on crater

SANAA, Feb. 13 (YPA) –The continued support and financing of Saudi Arabia for the parties to the conflict in the southern provinces of Yemen with money and weapons, including al-Qaeda elements, places those areas on a crater of a volcano that may explode at any moment.

After signing the so-called “Riyadh agreement”, between Hadi’s government and the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council in November 2019, Saudi Arabia gave itself the right of a military presence in Aden province, which turned it into an armory threatening international navigation in the Gulf of Aden.

Saudi Arabia has adopted a policy that does not differ from the British occupation, through deepening the differences between the local parties (Islah Party and the transitional council) and investing those differences in Abyan and Shabwa provinces in order to divert attention from the implementation of its oil project in Yemen’s eastern province of Mahra.

Recently, Saudi Arabia has exploited military conflicts between Islah militants and the transitional council’s militias in Abyan and Shabwa, since the signing of the “Riyadh Agreement”. It pushed dozens of al-Qaeda operatives from Marib and Jawf provinces to Abyan, during the past two months, in order to exhaust the transitional council’s militias there on the one hand, and weaken them in Aden on the other hand.

While the UAE sent heavy weapons to the southern transitional council’s militia in January, including vehicles carrying large missiles.

Political observers accused Saudi Arabia of deliberately foiling the Riyadh agreement, for the second time, with the aim of mixing cards, fueling conflicts and deepening differences between the people of the southern provinces.

Saudi Arabia is seeking to subject the UAE-funded forces led by the mercenary commander Tariq Afash, especially after the Saudi Defense Ministry summoned Afash to Riyadh, last January, with the aim of imposing its control on Mocha port and many Yemeni islands in the Red Sea.

YPA