US, Saudi Policies Stoking Tensions in Middle East Addressing his supporters via
a televised speech broadcast live from the Lebanese capital city of Beirut,
Seyed Hassan Nasrullah said the crises gripping the region were the offspring of
wrong policies made in Washington and Riyadh, press tv reported.
The Hezbollah leader said the world cannot tolerate the deadly US-backed Saudi
campaign against Yemen.
Pointing to the case of missing Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi who was
apparently been murdered recently, Nasrullah said the disappearance of the
journalist had brought new international fallout and scrutiny on the Saudi war
on Yemen.
"I tell the Saudi rulers that now is the right time to take a bold stance and
stop the war on Yemen... The international cover for their military campaign has
started to crumble, especially after (Khashoggi's) incident. The kingdom's image
in the world has never been worse throughout 100 years.”
Nasrullah said the alleged murder had put the White House and its closest ally
Riyadh in a very difficult situation. "There is no doubt that the rulers of
Saudi Arabia and America are in a difficult situation due to the case of
Khashoggi's disappearance.”
It has become almost certain, the Hezbollah leader said, that Khashoggi was
abducted, tortured, killed and dismembered with a saw inside the Saudi consulate
in Turkish coastal city of Istanbul in early October.
The Khashoggi case has rightly generated international backlash against Saudi
Arabia, the type of reaction that the deaths and starvation in Yemen were
unfortunately unable to muster.
Day after day, increasingly gruesome details about the alleged murder are being
leaked to the press and media. According to recent reports quoting Turkish
officials, the journalist was tortured and cut into pieces with a bone saw while
still alive, before a 15-man hit squad took his body away in a black car on
October 2.
Since March 2015, thousands of civilians have been killed in the Saudi-led
campaign airstrikes on Yemen and nearly 23 million people, about two thirds of
the population, rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
According to several observers, the Saudi regime is responsible for the
overwhelming majority of civilian deaths.
The Legal Center for Rights and Developments in Yemen says the Saudi-led
aggression has left 15,185 civilians, including 3,527 children, dead.
Hospitals and schools are routinely bombed. Just this August, at least 42
children were killed inside a school bus in the north of the country.
The global charity Save the Children recently said at least 349 civilians had
been killed from June to September solely in the city of Hudaydah. The charity
describes the campaign as a "war on children."
Nevertheless, Washington and some of its allies only seek to continue selling
American weapons to Riyadh. For that reason, the administration of US President
Donald Trump is even willing to accept the Saudi narrative that Khashoggi was
killed "by mistake" while he was being interrogated.
Nasrullah also strongly denounced the Israeli regime for escalating the
situation in the besieged Gaza Strip, saying "Palestinians have no choice but to
resist the Israeli aggression.”
Source: DefaPress