No Iranian military advisors in Yemen: Official

A senior Iranian official has dismissed allegations that a number of Iranian military experts have been killed in Yemen, saying Tehran has dispatched no military advisors to the war-ravaged Arab country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has no military advisors in Yemen,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Saturday.

He added that only Iran’s embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a is engaged in “official and overt” activities.

Amir-Abdollahian’s remarks came after Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV channel claimed on Saturday that five Iranian experts and technicians had been killed in a Saudi airstrike in the northwestern Yemeni city of Sa’ada.

The Iranian diplomat also pointed to the continuation of the Saudi military campaign against Yemen and the blockade of the impoverished state and said the ongoing human catastrophe in Sana’a and Riyadh’s war crimes against the innocent Yemeni people “have no justification.”

Saudi Arabia has been pounding different areas in Yemen since March 26 without any authorization from the United Nations and in defiance of international calls for the cessation of its deadly campaign against the Arab country.

The main objective behind the Saudi aggression against Yemen are to weaken the Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the country’s fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The UN says at least 2,600 people have been killed and 11,000 others wounded in the Saudi military campaign.