Yemen condemns US sanctions on five Houthi Ansarullah officials as "American terrorism"

The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on five Yemeni citizens and members of the Houthi Ansarullah movement in Yemen, with the popular group denouncing the move as “an act of American terrorism” against the war-wracked Arab country.

The department, in a statement released on Thursday, announced that the US sanctions were slapped on several officials including Deputy Director of Yemen’s National Security Agency Mutlaq Amer al-Marani, Head of the Political Security Office Maj. Gen. Abdul Qader al-Shami, and Abdul Hakim al-Khawani, who runs the National Security Agency.

The statement said the figures were designated for what it alleged as "human rights abuses".

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, condemned the US sanctions on the Yemeni Ansarullah officials as “a terrorist act.”

“Recent sanctions by the United States, which itself is commanding aggression and attacks on the Yemeni people, are condemned and viewed as an illegal act. There is no ruling that allows the United States to sanction others,” Houthi wrote in a post published on his official Twitter page

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Houthi added, “The US move to put countries on the sanctions list is another reason why the United States does not recognize the world order represented by the Security Council.”

The member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council described Washington's sanctions as “American terrorism.”

Earlier, Houthi had stated that United States is killing Yemeni civilians en masse in order to keep production at its major arms manufacturing corporations running, lower its rate of unemployment, pay off its debts and advance the Israeli regime’s plots in the region.

“Yemenis are getting killed on a daily basis by the US-Saudi-Emirati coalition of aggression and their allies. They wake up to the sounds of US-made bomb explosions, are subjected to toxic gases, witness the aftermath of mass killings and remember women, children and the elderly who die as a result,” he wrote in a tweet ion Tuesday

UN, international aid agencies warn US against plan to blacklist Yemen’s Ansarullah

The UN and international aid agencies warn the US against blacklisting Yemeni popular Ansarullah movement, stressing the move would exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen.

The remarks came days after the United States designated the Yemeni popular Houthi Ansarullah movement along with several other groups as “Entities of Particular Concern” under the so-called Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 2016.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of Riyadh-allied former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah.

The war has claimed more than 100,000 lives in Yemen, according to the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization.

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