Tehran calls in Saudi envoy over aid plane interception
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Saudi Arabia’s chargé d'affaires in Tehran to express its protest over Riyadh’s interception of an Iranian aid flight to war-wracked Yemen.
Saudi Arabia's most senior diplomat in Tehran was summoned on Friday after Saudi fighter jets prevented an Iranian plane, which was carrying medical aid, from entering the Yemeni airspace.
This is while the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) had obtained the necessary permission to fly in the Oman-Yemen route and send a plane in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in order to fly Yemeni patients back to Iran and distribute medical aid to the injured in the impoverished Arab country, an Iranian Foreign Ministry official said.
He added that the Saudi fighter jets intercepted the Iranian plane and forced them to return to Iran.
The official described the move as a blatant interference in Yemen’s internal affairs and said the Islamic Republic would proceed with its efforts to help the Yemeni people and treat those wounded in the Saudi aggression against Yemen.
Saudi Arabia launched its aerial campaign against Yemen on March 26 - without a United Nations mandate - in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
On April 21, Riyadh announced the end of the first phase of its unlawful military operation, which claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 people in 27 days. However, the airstrikes have continued, with Saudi bombers targeting different areas across the country.
The Saudi aggression against Yemen has claimed the lives of more than 100 children over the past month, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
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