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Yemen Health Ministry Condemns Militias Looting Medical Aid, Coup Leader Calls for More Bloodshed | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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A boy walks on a street littered with cooking gas cylinders after a fire and explosions destroyed a nearby gas storage during clashes between fighters of the Popular Resistance Committees and Houthi fighters earlier today, in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz … REUTERS/Stringer


Taiz – Yemen’s health ministry condemned the unwarranted confiscation of medical equipment belonging to the dialysis center affiliated with al-Thawra hospital in the Taiz governorate.

Iran-aligned Houthis militias had stormed the center, looting its supplies and equipment. Such a criminal act threatens the lives of hundreds of local patients with kidney failure.

The ministry said in a statement broadcast on Tuesday that this act of aggression came at a time the humanitarian tragic scene is further deteriorating due to the war and siege imposed by the militias.

“The pro-coup militias have confiscated about 1,800 bottles of dialysis solution, 10,200 packages of sodium bicarbonate and 200 filters used to disinfect dialysis machines,” the Yemen News Agency, SABA, reported.

SABA’s statement stressed that the continuation of such irresponsible acts will lead to a health disaster and disruption at the renal dialysis center in the hospital, and could result in the deaths of hundreds of patients with chronic kidney failure while accusing the militia of confiscating the supplies.

The statement called on international organizations and human rights groups to exert more pressure on the pro-coup militias to return these supplies.

The leader of Houthi militias, Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, has reaffirmed his lust for power at whatever expense it comes, pledging his allegiance to Tehran, reported the Saudi Press Agency SPA.

In a Sunday televised speech broadcast, Al-Houthi pointed to the need to push more men to battlefronts and intensify recruitment campaigns across several governorates to increase recruitment.

Moreover, Al-Houthi also relied in waging his absurd wars on the loyalty of many Yemenis to the deposed Ali Abdullah Saleh, exploiting the poverty and destitution of Yemeni governorates in finding fresh cannon fodder among children and youths, said SPA.

According to Yemeni media sources, the observers estimated the death toll in the province of Hajjah alone about 3000, and other thousands of wounded and disabled, mostly children and young people in Haradh, Medi, Taiz and Mokha.

Yemen’s war has pitted pro-government forces against Iran-aligned Houthi insurgents and their allies, renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. A Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to help the government retake the capital Sanaa.