Saudi forces tortured seven Yemeni citizens to death with electricity: Report

“Security source in Sa’ada confirmed that the seven victims died after being tortured with electricity,” Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported late on Thursday, saying the death toll was preliminary and that the atrocity was perpetrated by Saudi forces in the al-Raqo district of the northwestern province.

The television network condemned the heinous crime and the Saudi army’s insistence on shedding Yemeni people’s blood by various means, including airstrikes, rocket and artillery shells, and torture.

The Human Rights Office in Sa’ada held the Saudi regime responsible for the murders and called on the United Nations and all international organizations to condemn the crime.

It also denounced the silence of the United Nations and international organizations as “complicity” in the Saudi crimes against the Yemeni people.

Last month, three citizens were killed when the Saudi-led coalition forces bombed the border areas of Sa’ada Province.

Various areas of the border districts in Sa’ada are subjected on a daily basis to Saudi missile and artillery shelling, inflicting heavy losses upon Yemenis in spite of an UN-brokered ceasefire, which went into effect early last month.

Last week, a Yemeni military official said Saudi-led coalition forces and their mercenaries had violated the ceasefire at least 211 times during the past 24 hours.

The two-month humanitarian truce, announced on April 2, was meant to halt all military operations in the war-ravaged country and bring the foreign military invasion to an end.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Coalition seizes another Yemeni fuel ship

Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition detained another oil tanker carrying thousands of tons of fuel toward Yemen in violation of the truce.

Al-Masirah television network quoted Essam al-Mutawakel, a spokesman for the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC), as saying on Thursday that the war coalition “continues its piracy on fuel tankers and is detaining the tanker Kornet.”

Mutawakel added, “The Kornet ship, loaded with 20,000 tons of gasoline and 9,000 tons of diesel, was detained despite the UN-sponsored truce.”

The company’s spokesman also announced that the coalition forces had released the Yemen-bound fuel ships of Yahud and Princess Khadija.

In a statement last Friday, the YPC announced that the Saudi-led coalition did not allow the Princess Khadija tanker, which was carrying 29,226 tons of diesel fuel, to dock at Hudaydah port and offload its cargo.