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Over dozen ships carrying oil, fuel impounded by Saudi-led coalition off Yemen coast: YPC

The Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) says the Saudi-led coalition waging a devastating war on Yemen is reportedly holding over a dozen ships carrying crude oil and energy derivatives destined for the war-wracked Arab country.

The company, in a statement circulated by the Arabic-language al-Masirah television network on Thursday, announced that 12 tankers loaded with more than 325 thousand tons of oil are moored off the coast of Yemen for more than 200 days. Two more ships are carrying diesel fuel and another has natural gas aboard.

The YPC noted that the vessels had undergone all inspection procedures in Djibouti by the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM), and obtained the relevant papers.

The Yemen Petroleum Company said the Saudi measures are in flagrant violation of the United Nations resolutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), rules of international humanitarian law and other rules relating to armed conflict as well as the provisions of the Stockholm agreement, which stressed in its entirety the need for facilitating the arrival of basic materials and humanitarian aid to the Yemen’s western port of Hudaydah in a way that meets the needs of the Yemeni nation.

Delegates from the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and representatives loyal to Riyadh-allied former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi held a round of peace negotiations in Rimbo, north of the Swedish capital city of Stockholm, in December 2018.

The talks resulted in the announcement of a breakthrough agreement.

The document included three provisions: a ceasefire along the Hudaydah front and the redeployment of armed forces out of the strategic city and its port; an agreement on prisoner exchange; and a statement of understanding on the southern Yemeni city of Ta’izz.

The YPC stressed that such inescapable facts point to the continuing piracy of the Saudi-led coalition, and the UN’s apathy to take serious and concrete actions to prevent various catastrophic repercussions of the restrictions.

The company argued that the Saudi-led coalition’s actions run counter to what the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, stated at the UN Security Council session on September 15, and clearly demonstrate the symbolic nature of his role.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives for over the past five years.

The popular Ansarullah movement, backed by armed forces, has been defending Yemen against the Saudi-led alliance, preventing the aggressors from fulfilling the objectives of the devastating war.

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