Aden (Al-Ittihad)
The Houthi group is booby-trapping fishing boats and pushing them towards the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Red Sea coast, as part of its attempts to disrupt international trade through the strait.
According to the director of the Saudi project to clear Yemeni lands of mines (Masam), Osama Al-Gosaibi, one of the project teams, in cooperation with the Yemeni National Mine Action Program, dismantled at the beginning of this month large explosive devices that were on board a fishing boat that washed away on the coast of Bab al-Mandab.
Al-Gosaibi added in a speech he delivered at the symposium on efforts made to remove mines and their impact on peace and human security, which was organized by the European Organization of Islamic Centers in Geneva, and reported by the project website, that this incident and others confirm the Houthi group’s insistence on disrupting international trade in one of the most important water straits in the country. The world also harms the local economy based on fishing activities, in addition to polluting the marine environment.
Al-Gosaibi stressed that Yemen is experiencing a real disaster that threatens the lives of civilians, represented by the random planting of mines and explosive devices, noting that the project’s estimates of the amount of landmines planted in the territory of the Republic of Yemen amount to two million mines.
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