“Houthi militias have been trafficking drugs, which the Yemeni security forces with the support of the coalition have been fighting to stop,” said Col. Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition at a press conference in Riyadh on Monday.
The spokesman accused the Houthis of being drug traffickers in cooperation with the Lebanese Hezbollah group.
Al-Maliki said that coalition forces were helping Yemen’s legitimate security forces to counter the Houthi drug trade. He added that many drug shipments had been seized and that some of the seized shipments had the slogan “Beirut Youth Council.”
“This explains the relationship between Hezbollah and the Houthi militias in an effort to find sources of funding for military operations,” he said.
“Al-Houthi militias continue to threaten maritime navigation in the Strait of Bab Al-Mandeb and the Red Sea.”
Yemeni security forces in Marib governorate confiscated a shipment of drugs coming from Lebanon, on its way to the Houthi militias in the capital Sanaa, according to the Yemeni Information Ministry.
On Thursday, the Yemeni minister of Information Mouammar Al-Aryani said on his Twitter account that the seized drug shipment was hidden inside coffee packets.
Al-Maliki said that Iranian-backed Houthi militias are using schools in Taiz district to avoid the Saudi-led coalition’s targeting.
The coalition said that it accepts the results of the investigation of the Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT) following an attack on a bus last month that killed dozens.