TEHRAN – Ansarallah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has strongly rejected accusations by Saudi Arabia that Yemeni Armed Forces targeted the holy city of Mecca.

Sayyed al-Houthi stressed that the accusation is misleading, a major lie, slander, falsehood, and the “lie of the age.” He emphasized that “the land of faith and the Yemeni people cannot target holy sites or accept attacks against them. Rather, they would sacrifice their lives and wealth to protect Mecca and the holy sites.”

In a speech, Sayyed al-Houthi said that Saudi Arabia is using its media capabilities to distort the picture, justify its crimes, drag others into the aggression, and conceal its failures and setbacks on the battlefield.

Saudi Arabia had previously leveled a similar allegation against Ansarallah without providing any evidence to back up the claim. That allegation was made during the widescale U.S.-backed war that a Saudi-led coalition initiated against Yemen in March 2015. 

Sayyed al-Houthi pointed out that Saudi air strikes have targeted more than 2,000 mosques in Yemen, including historic mosques that were nowhere near the front lines. He highlighted that these crimes were part of an established policy for which Ansarallah possesses documents and evidence, citing acknowledgments by international organizations and the United Nations.

He also noted that the Saudis are fighting with American aircraft and bombs, while American, Israeli, and British intelligence officers are directing operations on the ground. He said Saudi Arabia was seeking to draw these parties into a direct war on an international level.

Addressing the people of southern Yemen, Sayyed al-Houthi stressed that they were not being targeted, saying that operations are directed solely at Saudi military mobilizations.

Call for an Islamic coalition against Israel

The Ansarallah leader also criticized countries and governments that ignore what the Palestinian people and the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque are facing. He explained that the real and immediate enemy of Islam’s holy sites is the Zionist regime, whose ideological plans and statements are based on taking Mecca and Medina and seizing Palestine and large parts of the Arab world.
He also announced readiness to act as part of an Islamic coalition to confront this Zionist threat, reaffirming his position on the central issue of defending Palestine and the holy sites. He said the immediate demand was an end to the Saudi aggression and the lifting of the blockade.

Yemeni people gathered and demonstrated on Friday in a mass mobilization rejecting the Saudi accusations as slander.

Meanwhile, the Yemeni Scholars Conference condemned Saudi Arabia’s claims that Mecca had been targeted, stressing that the allegation represents a “valuable opportunity for the Zionist enemy to target holy sites and incite discord among Muslims.”
Accordingly, the Yemeni scholars rejected Saudi Arabia’s exploitation of the Two Holy Mosques “to serve colonial objectives aimed at fragmenting the Islamic world and controlling Muslim wealth.”

The real threat to Mecca

The statement said that the real threat to Mecca and the Holy Kaaba lies in the American and Western military bases located in the lands of the Two Holy Mosques and the Arabian Peninsula.

According to the statement, the danger also lies in “opening the airspace to Zionist aircraft and handing over the management of hotels for pilgrims, as well as security administration, to Israeli companies.”

The scholars stressed that the claim regarding an attack on Mecca was a “desperate attempt” aimed at “tarnishing the resistance of the Yemeni people,” but that it “will fail, just as previous attempts have failed.”

The statement warned against “any country becoming involved with the Saudi regime in aggression against the Yemeni people.”

The Yemeni scholars called on all free people around the world, particularly scholars and media outlets, to stand with the oppressed and blockaded Yemeni people and to “avoid being drawn into the false media narrative of the Saudi regime, whose lies and fabrications have been exposed by events, particularly the events in Gaza.”

They reaffirmed the Yemeni people’s steadfast position on the central issue of the Islamic world: the Palestinian cause and the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as on developments in Lebanon, Iran, and Syria.

This comes as Yemeni Supreme Political Council President Mahdi al-Mashat refuted the “false claims of the Saudi regime that we targeted Mecca,” saying they were a “desperate attempt to mobilize the peoples.”

Al-Mashat added that “the lies no longer deceive the peoples of our Arab and Islamic world, just as the previous claims about threats to international maritime navigation failed to do so.”

The Supreme Political Council President said the people of Yemen are “the strongest in faith and loyalty to the Islamic holy sites and are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the House of God.”

This comes as the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) are engaged in clashes with Saudi-backed forces in several provinces after launching preemptive strikes against their battlefield mobilizations. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, continues to carry out airstrikes against several provinces, which Yemeni forces continue to respond to.

Saudi Arabia has been carrying out attacks through airstrikes targeting several provinces, including Marib, Al-Jawf, Taiz, and Hudaydah.

YAF spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree announced that Saudi warplanes carried out 37 airstrikes over the past 24 hours using F-15 aircraft, as part of the ongoing Saudi aggression against the Yemeni people.

Saree explained that the warplanes involved in the F-15s took off from Khamis Mushait Air Base and targeted the provinces of Taiz and Hajjah, resulting in civilian deaths and injuries.

Amid the Saudi aggression against Yemen, head of the Sanaa negotiating team Mohammed Abdul Salam stressed that the aggressive military escalation against the country would not enable Riyadh to achieve any of its objectives. 

Instead, he said, it would further complicate the situation, noting that Saudi Arabia had already tried the military option in Yemen and achieved nothing through it but failure.

Reports have emerged that Saudi Arabia has asked the Sultanate of Oman to request that Ansarallah agree to a two-week truce, during which discussions would be held to seek a solution to Yemen’s humanitarian situation.

The YAF continues to confront the aggression, as Yemeni armed forces engage in clashes with Saudi-backed forces in several provinces following preemptive strikes against their field mobilizations. In addition, the YAF is targeting vital Saudi facilities on Saudi territory, including oil facilities and Khamis Mushait Air Base. Earlier the YAF published footage of a Saudi F-15 shot down over Yemeni territory. 

The YAF had previously announced the equation of “blockade for blockade and escalation for escalation” in response to the Saudi aggression and the blockade imposed on the Yemeni people for more than a decade.