Tehran ‘arming Houthis’

JEDDAH: Houthis are receiving arms shipments from Iran, said Brig. Gen. Ahmad Al-Assiri, consultant in the office of the defense minister.
In a telephonic interview with Al-Arabiya channel on Saturday, Al-Assiri said the Houthi militias and forces loyal to ousted Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh have, in their possession, nearly 300 Scud ballistic missiles. “They seized these weapons from the Yemeni Army,” he said.
Al-Assiri’s statement came in the aftermath of Saudi Arabia’s successful interception of a Scud missile that was launched toward Khamis Mushayt by the Houthis on Friday.
Saudi troops used a Patriot missile battery to intercept the missile.
“Thanks to Allah, it was intercepted by the Royal Saudi Defense Forces by two Patriot missiles,” said a statement from the coalition command center. The coalition forces destroyed the rocket launcher whose location was identified south of Saada.
“The coalition forces involved in the anti-Houthi operation do not exclude the possibility of more such attempts,” said Al-Assiri.
“We are facing a brutal enemy which does not hesitate in attacking and killing civilians,” he said. “Our forces are fully ready to neutralize these missiles, and this is what happened late last night (Friday),” he said.
Al-Assiri explained that since the start of the military operations, the enemy militias were divided into two parts, the first was the Houthi fighters whose mission was to engage with the Saudi ground troops at the Saudi borders with Yemen, and the second was the forces supporting deposed President Saleh inside Yemen.
“What happened on Friday on the border was that the two parts joined forces and launched a desperate attack on our borders,” he said.
He asserted that the military operations against Saleh and the Houthi militias will continue.