Yemen Won’t Be Silent Over Looting of Natural Resources – Al-Mashat

By Staff, Agencies

A top Yemeni official condemned the incessant looting of the war-torn country’s natural resources, in particular natural gas and crude oil, saying the Yemeni nation will not remain silent over such plundering.

“We denounce the [Saudi-led] mercenaries for plundering the Yemeni people’s national assets and depositing the proceeds in a Saudi National Bank [SNB] account,” President of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Mahdi al-Mashat underlined on Wednesday.

Stressing that the Yemeni nation lacks the most basic services, the official said the current freeze on the salaries of government employees, owing to the brutal Saudi-led aggression and unjust siege, can be resolved through oil revenues.

“The revenues of oil and gas looted by mercenaries are fairly enough to pay the salaries of civil servants and pensioners, and promote development,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Mashat called on the United Nations and the international community to pressure the Saudi-led coalition forces to fulfill their commitments under the Stockholm Agreement and facilitate payment of the salaries of all government employees and pensioners.

He further stressed that the Yemeni people "will not remain silent about the ongoing looting of their wealth, whose profits are converted by mercenaries into companies and real estate abroad.”

In a fresh development on Wednesday, the Yemen Petroleum Company [YPC] said the Saudi-led coalition has seized another Yemen-bound ship carrying fuel in blatant violation of the recently-extended ceasefire brokered by the UN.

The fuel ship, Symphony, was seized while carrying tens of thousands of tons of diesel oil, Yemen’s official Saba news agency reported, citing a statement by the YPC spokesman Essam al-Mutawakel.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.