Iran continues to supply Houthis with weapons: Yemen minister

The Iran-backed militia has escalated military operations in Yemen’s Marib region as well as attacks against Saudi Arabia. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 14 March 2021
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Iran continues to supply Houthis with weapons: Yemen minister

  • ‘Iran-made marine mines used recently in terrorist attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea’

DUBAI: Tehran has not stopped providing the Houthis with military support as the militia continues to be equipped with Iran-made marine mines, a Yemen senior official said.

“The terrorist Houthi militiamen displayed in what they called ‘Exhibition of Military Productions’ types of Iran-made marine mines, used recently in attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea,” according to Muamer Al-Eryani, the minister of information, culture and tourism, in a report by the Yemeni News Agency reported, citing Muamer Al-Eryani, the minister of information, culture and tourism.

“These Iran-made mines show that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have continued to supply the Houthis with weapons, military technology and experts, making the Yemeni territories a launch-pad to threaten commercial navigation and control international waterways,” Al-Eryani said.

The Iran-backed militia has escalated military operations in Yemen’s Marib region as well as ballistic missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Ismail Qaani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ overseas Quds, has admitted that Tehran supports the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and said that the militia launched ‘18 operations in less than 10 days’ targeting the Kingdom.

Qaani, who took the top post after his predecessor Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike, said that Iran supports all such armed groups that are ‘forces of resistance against global arrogance.’

Ordnance experts recently deactivated and removed 2,200 Houthi landmines in the western provinces of Taiz and Hodeidah.

Soleimani’s shadow
Qassem Soleimani left a trail of death and destruction in his wake as head of Iran’s Quds Force … until his assassination on Jan. 3, 2020. Yet still, his legacy of murderous interference continues to haunt the region

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A man detonates explosive belt during arrest attempt in Iraq, injuring 2 security members

Updated 6 sec ago
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A man detonates explosive belt during arrest attempt in Iraq, injuring 2 security members

  • The raid was being conducted in the Al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria
  • No members of the security forces were killed

BAGHDAD: A man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up Friday while a security force was trying to arrest him in western Iraq near the Syrian border, killing himself and wounding two security members, an Iraqi security official said.
The raid was being conducted in the Al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The official added that “preliminary information” confirms that no members of the security forces were killed, while two personnel were injured and transferred for medical treatment.
Iraq’s National Security Agency said in a statement that its members besieged a hideout of a Daesh group security official and two of his bodyguards. One bodyguard ignited his explosives belt, killing him. It gave no further details.
Daesh once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremist group was defeated on the battlefield in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019 but its sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries.
In December, two US service members and an American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blamed on Daesh. The US carried out strikes on Syria days later in retaliation.
US and Iraqi authorities in January began transferring hundreds of the nearly 9,000 Daesh members held in jails run by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria to Iraq, where Iraqi authorities plan to prosecute them.