“If the need arises”, the team directly assigned to coalition cooperation could be augmented, the spokesman said.
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The Saudi-led coalition has been criticised for killing thousands of civilians and bombing non-military targets since the commencement of airstrikes in March a year ago.
The Houthis hail from the north of the country, and according to MSF, the “coalition has resumed an intensified campaign” there since the Houthis and the coalition suspended peace talks earlier this month. The callousness of this announcement – just days after Saudi Arabia rebooted its devastating bombing campaign in Yemen – is breathtaking.
The coalition of Arab states, which is backed by the USA, intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to help battle Shiite Muslim rebels who had forced the president into exile.
Yet allegations of strikes on civilian facilities have continued.
MSF is one of handful of worldwide aid groups operating on the ground in Yemen where a 16-month civil war between a Gulf Arab coalition and the Houthis – rebels allied with Iran – has killed more than 6,500 people and brought one of world’s poorest countries close to starvation.
In a press conference, Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said the employers had no more capacity to pay the OFWs’ back wages, allowances and benefits, resulting to a massive retrenchment.
Rockets fired by Yemeni rebels into the southern Saudi city of Najran on Saturday killed a civilian, the kingdom’s civil defence agency said. Earlier, 11 were reported killed.
The strike on the facility in Abs, in Yemen’s Hajjah province, was the fourth of its kind during the year-long civil war.
The announcement comes at the end of a week of several high-profile incidents in which Saudi warplanes attacked and killed significant numbers of Yemeni civilians, including an attack on a school and the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders facility.
“We greatly value the work MSF does for the people of Yemen under hard circumstances”, reads the report from the Saudi Press Agency.
It also said there was a huge demonstration in Sanaa in support of the rebels and their allies, forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On Tuesday, a coalition air strike hit a hospital operated by medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres in Yemen, killing 19 people and prompting the group to evacuate staff from six hospitals, citing a “loss of confidence in the Saudi-led coalition to prevent fatal attacks”.
At the time of the strike, the hospital was “full of patients recovering from surgery, in maternity, newborns and children in pediatrics”, MSF has said. While the United Nations supports the reinstatement of Hadi as president, it has condemned the bombing of the Yemeni population, and worldwide humanitarian groups have accused Riyadh of directly causing civilian casualties.
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“Regrettably, warmongering still continues in Yemen”, said Jaberi Ansari said. “It has enabled the coalition in many ways, including selling arms to the Saudis to mollify them after the nuclear deal with Iran”, editors wrote.
