Alwaght- Yemenis have turned out massively in the capital, Sana’a, on Saturday at a funeral procession for a senior official from the Ansarullah movement who was killed in a Saudi airstrike.
The masses gathered to pay tribute to Saleh al-Samad, the chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, who lost his life in a Saudi air raid on his residence in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah on April 19.
Live images from Yemeni Al Masirah TV showed a Saudi strike near the funeral ceremony but there were no immediate reports of possible casualties.
The funeral prayer for al-Samad and his companions who died in a raid was held at Al-Sabeen Square, attracting hundreds of thousands including top officials, led by the new President of the Supreme Political Council, President Mahdi al-Mashat and the head of the Supreme Revolutionary Committees, Muhammad Ali al-Houthi. The crowd gathered at a mosque within the square in a show of unity and solidarity with Yemeni leadership in facing the brutal enemy led by the Saudi regime, which has waged war on Yemen for four years.
Al-Sammad was an influential figure in resistance against the war imposed by Saudi Arabia on the impoverished country. He was also number two on the Saudi-led coalition’s most-wanted list.
All Yemenis people held the US and Saudi Arabia responsible for Samad’s killing, saying, “this crime won’t go unanswered."
Meanwhile, Yemeni news agency reported that the country's fired eight Badr 1-type ballistic missiles at "economic and vital targets" in Saudi Arabia's southwestern Jizan region in retaliation.
The Saudi aggression against Yemen was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government and against the country’s Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective administration.
The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of Saudi Arabia's regional and Western allies.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured during the past three years.
The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.
