Iranian cleric raps Arabs’ silence over war on Yemen

A senior Iranian cleric has lashed out at Arab states for their failure to react to the killing of innocent Yemeni people in Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes against the impoverished country.

“Why do you keep silent on the crimes of your governments?” Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani addressed the question to the Saudi people and other Arab and Muslim nations during his sermon to worshipers at the weekly Friday prayers in Tehran.

“I just tell the Saudi people and their neighboring Arab nations: You are complicit in this sin with your silence,” he added.

The senior cleric said the Saudi government kills people in Yemen, refuses to allow in humanitarian aid and pounds Sana'a's airport to prevent aid planes from landing.

Emami Kashani further noted that if Muslim nations had stood up against the arrogant powers’ crimes, they could have stopped the ongoing oppression against the Syrian, Iraqi, Palestinian and Yemeni people.

Saudi Arabia launched its airstrikes against Yemen on March 26 without a United Nations mandate in a bid to undermine the Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The Saudi regime’s warplanes have repeatedly targeted residential areas across the country.

On April 21, Riyadh announced the end of the first phase of its unlawful military operations, but airstrikes have continued, with Saudi bombers targeting different areas across the country in a new phase.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Friday that nearly 1,250 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict in Yemen since mid-March.

The UN health agency said 1,244 Yemenis have lost their lives and 5,044 have been injured from March 19 to April 27.

Hundreds of women and children are among those killed, according to the WHO.