Iran strongly condemns Saudi killing of Yemeni women

Iran has strongly condemned recent attacks by Saudi aircraft on civilian targets in various Yemeni cities as well as the kingdom’s Saturday bombing of a wedding ceremony in northern Ma’rib province.

“The intensified bombardment of residential areas, the continued blockade and closure of maritime, ground, and air entry points, and the denial of access to humanitarian aid and basic needs by Saudi rulers indicate their desperation, defeat and countless failures in achieving their goals through aggression on Yemen,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said late Sunday.

An airstrike by Saudi Arabia struck a wedding procession east of Yemen’s capital Saturday night, killing at least a dozen women.

Witnesses and health officials said the airstrike targeted the women as they marched in the Harib al-Qaramesh region in Ma’rib province, where it’s a tradition for the bride’s female friends and relatives to escort her to the wedding ceremony where the groom awaits.

Separately, at least three civilians lost their lives when Saudi aircraft carried out an assault in Mawza district in Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz on Sunday evening.

Qassemi criticized the international community's silence on the “Saudi war crimes which are committed with American weapons”.

He said attacks on residential areas and civilian targets, and Saudi Arabia’s denial of access to international relief agencies is a flagrant violation of indisputable principles of humanitarian law.

The spokesman said those providing arms support to the aggressors are complicit in daily atrocities committed by the Saudis in Yemen.

He called on the United Nations and the effective countries in the Yemen crisis to increase their efforts to immediately stop the attacks and take necessary measures to protect the safety and security of civilians, especially women and children.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has been pounding Yemen where more than 12,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The UN has listed Yemen as the world’s No. 1 humanitarian crisis, with 7 million people on the brink of famine, where more than 2,000 people have also died of cholera this year.

Attack in Quetta

Qassemi also condemned a terrorist attack by the Daesh group on a church in the Pakistan city of Quetta on Sunday, denouncing it as a brutal and blind act against innocent people.

“The remnants of the Takfiri-Zionist terrorists of Daesh, who reared a head in the Middle East with the support of certain regional and trans-regional countries but whose defeat has become definitive in Syria and Iraq, have now scattered around the region, killing and spilling the blood of innocent people of every faith and persuasion,” he said.

Two terrorist bombers struck a church in Pakistan on Sunday, killing nine people and wounding more than 50 others, in the first attack on a church claimed by the country's Daesh group affiliate.

The Takfiri group, Qassemi said, is trying to create terror and trepidation through “blind, aimless and scattered terrorist attacks” among nations and undermine their determination and unity.  

"Although the largest terrorist group in the world disintegrated with the steely will of the regional governments and nations in spite of the ill-wishers, the group’s remnants seek to keep alive its ideology through such blind and barbarous acts in order to keep the region and the world in turmoil and unrest," he said.

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