TEHRAN — Hossein Amir Abdollahian, a senior foreign policy advisor to the Iranian Parliament speaker, says Saudi Arabia’s ceasefire in Yemen, which is intended to rebuild its forces to resume aggression, is not the solution to the Yemeni problem.

“Ceasefire in & lifting all humanitarian sanctions on #Yemen are two key demands by Yemenis,” Amir Abdollahian said in a tweet on Friday.

“Ending strikes against Yemen is a good move, but the unsustainably Saudi-initiated some-day truce aimed at rebuilding forces to resume agression [sic] and bloodshed is not the solution,” he added.

On Thursday night, the spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, dismissed a two-week ceasefire announced by the Saudi-led coalition waging a bloody military onslaught against the impoverished country as a publicity stunt.

“The ceasefire announcement by Saudi Arabia is a ploy indeed as it is pressing ahead with raids on Yemen, and conducting operations on various fronts, including areas where there were no clashes at all,” Abdul-Salam said in an exclusive interview with the Qatar-based and Arabic-language al-Jazeera television news network.

He added, “The Saudi ceasefire is just a political and media maneuver. It pursues more than one goal. It seeks to undercut the ongoing serious negotiations with the United Nations and burnish the blood-stained image of Saudi Arabia in this critical moment when the world is facing the coronavirus pandemic.”

Abdul-Salam underlined that the sensible decision for the Saudi-led coalition would be to stop the military aggression on Yemen, and lift the crippling blockade.

Meanwhile, Yemen on Friday reported its first case of infection with the novel coronavirus in a southern province under the control of Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to the country’s former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

This has raised fears of an outbreak in an impoverished country where five years of a bloody campaign led by Saudi Arabia have shattered the health system.

The supreme national emergency committee for COVID-19 in Yemen said in a posting on its Twitter page on Friday that the case was diagnosed in the oil-producing Hadhramaut province, according to Press TV.

The committee said the infected patient has been identified in the port town of Ash Shihr, and he was in stable condition and receiving care.

The local governor, Farag al-Bouhsni, said on his Facebook page that the area would be placed under a partial curfew and all workers at the town’s port will be quarantined for 14 days.

MH/PA