File photo. Workers offloading bags of food from a UN ship in the port of Hodeidah in 2018 (Photo Credit: AFP)
On 10 January, a senior Yemeni official said the Saudi-led coalition will face “serious consequences” if it attacks the port of Hodeidah.
Abed Mohammed al-Thor, the deputy head of the Moral Guidance Department in the Yemeni Army, told reporters that if the Saudi-led coalition attacked the key port, the Yemeni government would be forced to take a different military strategy that will have grave consequences for the whole region.
“So, any military action against Hodeidah port means a miscalculated stupidity from the Saudi regime and would have dire consequences, first for this regime, and second for the Emirati regime,” warned Al-Thor.
The deputy head also added that the Yemeni army would target Israel if the coalition attacked the port.
The warning comes a day after the Saudi-led coalition announced that it considers the ports of Hodeidah and Salif as legitimate military targets due to “actions” by the Ansarallah resistance movement.
The coalition claims that Ansarallah is using the two ports to launch drone and missiles attacks against it as well as against commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea.
The Yemeni armed forces have denied the accusations and challenged the Saudi-led coalition to provide evidence to support its claims.
The armed forces said no military activities are carried out at either port and that the UN has been inspecting the two facilities on a daily basis since the signing of the Stockholm agreement in 2018.
During the course of the seven year-long conflict, the Saudi-led coalition has, on numerous occasions, accused the Yemeni army of using civilian facilities to carry out military operations.
The Yemeni army, however, says such accusations are false and an attempt by the coalition to justify its airstrikes on civilian facilities, such as schools and hospitals.
On 10 January, Al-Masirah television revealed that the Saudi-led coalition used footage from a 2003 documentary on Iraq claiming that it was ‘evidence’ of Ansarallah missiles being kept in Hodeidah port.
According to Al-Masirah, the images are from a documentary titled Severe Clear.