Yemen Demands Extension of Arms Embargo against Iran

Houthis ride on the back of a police patrol truck after participating in a gathering in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb.19, 2020. (Reuters)
Houthis ride on the back of a police patrol truck after participating in a gathering in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb.19, 2020. (Reuters)
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Yemen Demands Extension of Arms Embargo against Iran

Houthis ride on the back of a police patrol truck after participating in a gathering in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb.19, 2020. (Reuters)
Houthis ride on the back of a police patrol truck after participating in a gathering in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb.19, 2020. (Reuters)

The legitimate Yemeni government urged on Saturday the need to extend the arms embargo against Tehran after busting a Houthi cell that confessed to smuggling weapons from Iran.

In a series of tweets, Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani said the cell admitted to receiving training in Iran and to having connections to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“This is damning evidence of Iranian complicity in running smuggling operations and supporting the militias with weapons (ballistic missiles and drones) to implement their destructive agenda in the region,” he said.

The confessions confirm that the Houthis were exploiting the Stockholm agreement on Hodeidah in order to use the coastal city’s ports “to smuggle Iranian weapons, escalate their terrorist military operations in Yemen and target civilians in Saudi Arabia and oil and trade ships in the Red Sea, he continued.

Moreover, the minister said the Iranian regime’s ongoing smuggling of arms to the Houthis was a flagrant violation of relevant international resolutions on Yemen.



WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)

The World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it completely.

Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.

Besides polio, the UN reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.