Saudi Arabia offers bounty for information on Houthi leaders

YemenExtra

Y.A

Riyadh has put some 40 high-ranking Ansarullah movement officials on terrorist list after Yemen targeted an international airport near the Saudi capital.

The leader of Ansarullah movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, and the director of the movement’s political council, Saleh al-Samad, are among those added to the list on Sunday.

The Saudis have also announced a bounty of up to $30 million for information leading to the arrest of the officials.

Meanwhile, the kingdom has boosted its blockade on Yemen, shutting down all the war-torn country’s air, sea, and land ports.

On Sunday, the Yemeni army said that it had targeted Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a long distance Borkan H2 ballistic missile.

Saudi Arabia also confirmed the launch, saying, however, that its air defense intercepted the missile, bringing it down north of the airport.

After the retaliatory attack, Saudi warplanes engaged in airstrikes on Yemen, hitting targets in the provinces of Sana’a and Sa’ada. The buildings of the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry and the National Security Council were hit during the latest Saudi strikes.

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign more than two and a half years ago. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.