Local Editor

The Secretary General of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has committed an "act of genocide" by using biological weapons in Yemen.

In a meeting with a delegation of Yemen’s high council of revolution in Iran’s capital of Tehran, Shamkhani said, "The Saudi government’s use of weapons which contain toxic and pathogenic gases in air and missile strikes against residential areas is aimed at genocide and breaking the legitimate resistance of the brave Yemeni people".

He described the massacre of innocent Yemeni women and children and the inhumane siege imposed on Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition as a war crime, and said, "Negotiations among Yemeni groups and preventing foreign meddling in the country is the only way to create understanding and restore security and stability to Yemen".

For his part, the head of the Yemeni delegation appreciated Iran’s effective support for the Yemeni people, and underscored his country’s firm resolve to fight against the foreign aggression.

In similar remarks in June, a senior leader of the Ansarullah revolutionary movement blasted Saudi Arabia for its continued use of internationally prohibited weapons, including chemical ordinance, against the Yemeni people.

"Saudi Arabia is still using chemical bombs against the Yemeni people", Hashem Adnan al-Basouri told FNA.

He underlined that Saudi Arabia hits residential areas with chemical weapons.

"A report by the Human Rights Watch [HRW] showed that Saudi Arabia has used poisonous gas in four airstrikes on different parts of Sa’ada province", al-Basouri added.

Saudi Arabia has been bombarding Yemen for 195 days now.

On March 26, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies backed by the United States began to launch a military aggression against Yemen by launching air strikes against the country in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former Yemeni President, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

The airstrikes have not been authorized by the United Nations [UN].

The ’civilian’ death toll in Yemen has risen to more than 2,300 with more than 4,000 other civilians wounded in the fighting in the country that has raged for more than a year now, according to the UN recently last month [September]. Yet, other organizations put the death toll at much higher.