News / Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia announces formation of anti-terror coalition

Tuesday, 15 December 2015 2:18 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 15 December 2015 2:18 AM ]

Saudi forces in Yemen (Reuters)

Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of an anti-terror military coalition compromised of 34 Islamic nations.

Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and several other African and Persian Gulf states are among the countries named in a statement announced on Saudi state television on Tuesday.

“The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations,” the statement said.

It added that the coalition has “a duty to protect the Islamic nation from the evils of all terrorist groups and organizations whatever their sect and name which wreak death and corruption on earth and aim to terrorize the innocent.”

In a press conference following the announcement, Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud said that the campaign would “coordinate” measures to battle terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan, without mentioning how the coordination would be carried out.

“We can’t undertake these operations without coordinating with legitimacy in this place and the international community,” he said.

The Saudi defense minister added that apart from confronting the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, the group would also take on “any terrorist organization that appears in front of us.”

*Yemeni men gather around a crater caused by a Saudi airstrike, in the capital Sana’a on November 29, 2015. (AFP)*

Saudi Arabia is currently engaged in a deadly military campaign in Yemen in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and return fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, to power.

More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured since the strikes began. The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure.

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