Saudi coalition seizes another Yemen-bound fuel tanker

Yemen’s Petroleum Company (YPC) says the Saudi-led coalition has seized yet another Yemen-bound fuel ship in blatant violation of a UN-brokered ceasefire.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the YPC said the seizure has “brought the number of confiscated Yemen-bound fuel ships to three” in recent days. The Lady Sarah fuel vessel was inspected and cleared by the UN, it added.

Reacting to the seizure, Mohammed Abdulsalam, the chief negotiator of Yemen's National Salvation Government, said the coalition has constantly violated the truce and is “killing time, which is not accepted by our nation.”

Saudi-led coalition forces committed thousands of violations of the ceasefire agreement within a month of its entry into force on April 2. The agreement was extended under the auspices of the UN on June 2 and is set to expire next month.

Over the past year, the coalition has been consistently looting and selling large quantities of Yemeni gas and crude oil.

Yemeni authorities accuse the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out a systematic campaign aimed at depleting the country’s natural resources.

Earlier this month, Mohammad Tahir Anam, an adviser to the Yemeni Supreme Political Council, warned Riyadh and its allies that companies and ships involved in the looting of Yemeni oil will be targeted by the Ansarullah resistance movement if the theft persists.

On July 3, Yemeni Prime Minister Abdulaziz Saleh bin Habtoor said the looting of Yemen’s oil by the Saudi-led coalition is carried out under directives from the White house.

Yemen’s Minister of Oil and Minerals Ahmad Abdullah Dares has warned that the Saudi seizure of ships carrying petroleum products to Yemen could lead to the suspension of the service sectors and cause “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

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Yemenis protest seizure of fuel tanker

Yemeni media reports said participants at a massive protest in the capital on Wednesday denounced the seizure of fuel tankers heading to the port of Hudaydah by Saudi-led forces. 

The protest was organized in front of the United Nations office in Sana’a.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies — including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015. The war was meant to eliminate Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall a former regime. The conflict, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals, but has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people.

The Yemeni army and popular committees have intensified their retaliatory attacks against targets deep inside Saudi Arabia and the UAE in response to the Saudi siege.

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