Yemenis should unite against al-Qaeda, Saudis: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Hussein al-Bukhaiti, a Yemeni activist and political commentator from Sana’a, to discuss the relentless attacks of Saudi Arabia against the impoverished Yemeni people.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Talk to us about the continued campaign of death and destruction that the Saudis have been carrying out against the people of Yemen, where we’re seeing Yemeni women and children mostly civilians are suffering the brunt of these attacks.

Al-Bukhaiti: Yeah, as you mentioned there was an airstrike in Taizz, killing a man and his daughter and as well this received in news that while first aid responders are trying to get to that area, al-Qaeda has opened fire on them not allowing them to reach that area which was struck by the Saudis’ a unite Arab jet.

And there are reports that two of the people who were trying to dig for anymore survivor were killed by attacks from al-Qaeda position close by to that area.

And we’ve seen this strike and the continuing of this strike against Yemen for eight months now. And there is no any international attention towards what happened in Yemen.

From the beginning of these attacks over 24,000 civilian casualties, 8,000 of them were killed.

And we’ve seen what happened like in Paris attacks we’ve seen that attention that Paris attacks and terrorist attacks there are getting into international media.  And there are calls of meeting at the UN Security Council and many countries have declared their support for France.

But in Yemen there’s totally different story. We’ve seen instead of having pressure on Saudis to stop targeting civilians, the United States has declared 1.3 billion dollars in arms deals.

They are giving the Saudi more bombs and more rockets to attack Yemenis and the main target of those Saudi strikes are civilians as we see every day.

Press TV: Would you say that the international community has failed the people of Yemen?

Al-Bukhaiti: Yeah, of course, they did. And we know that after two or three weeks, when the attack on Yemen has begun, there was this 2216 resolution from the UN Security Council instead of condemning the Saudi action.

They have welcomed the Saudi action, they have enforced a blockade on Yemen. They have supported the Saudis to enforce this blockade to stop the so-called weapons from coming to Yemen and the only weapons they want to stop to is to come to the Yemeni army.

Because we know the other parties who are fighting, the Yemeni army and Ansarullah, the Houthis, are getting weapons from Saudi on daily bases, and those groups are Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and ISIS (Daesh).

And this is really what making the Yemeni people angry about the international community, while they condemn terrorist attacks in France, they are supporting the Saudi in giving those weapons to al-Qaeda.

And just an example, we’ve seen the latest al-Qaeda attack in Aden. They targeted the former prime minister [Khaled] Bahah.

They used US humvees which were provided by the United Arab Emirates to al-Qaeda in Aden.

And we’ve seen as well three weeks ago al-Qaeda has released the 16-minute video over their operation and fighting operation against they called Houthi and the Yemeni army in Taizz.

So, this is clear that what happens in France, they call it terrorist and what happens in Yemen they call it resistant and they continue to support that.

Because Yemeni life, Muslim life and Arab life in general it means nothing to the international community.

So, the only way to stop is by the Yemeni people to unite and to fight al-Qaeda themselves without any help from anyone else.

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