Coalition Does Not Rule Out Possibility of Houthi Commander’s Brother Being Killed in Regional Conflicts
Yemen Monitor/ Newsroom:
The spokesman for the Coalition supporting legitimacy in Yemen, Colonel Turki Al-Maliki, denied the claims of Houthi leader Hussein al-Azzi regarding the recent recovery of his brother Fares al-Azzi’s body, describing them as misleading.
In a statement to the newspaper “Asharq Al-Awsat,” Al-Maliki said that what was stated in the Houthi leader’s statements and circulated by the group’s affiliated websites “is inaccurate, lacks credibility, and that he does not rule out that his death was among the casualties of the regional conflicts occurring in the region.”
He attributed this to the fact that “the process of recovering and handing over bodies took place in June 2023, and through it, the bodies of 9 Saudi forces martyrs, 20 Yemeni army martyrs, and 57 Houthi fighters who were killed on the borders were recovered and handed over.”
Al-Azzi, the former Deputy Foreign Minister in the internationally unrecognized Houthi government in Sana’a, had posted on the “X” platform a eulogy accompanied by a picture of his brother, announcing that there would be no condolences, citing his concern about not distracting the group’s fighters from the war against “Israel,” as he claims.
When asked about the motives behind choosing this timing for the announcement, the coalition spokesman said: “Such statements are misleading, and they may have been announced for internal reasons specific to the Houthis, knowing that the name mentioned in the statement was not among the names submitted during the negotiations to recover the bodies, and it cannot be ruled out that this name is among the casualties of regional conflicts.”
Al-Maliki stressed that the coalition “deals with the issue of prisoners, detainees, and the recovery of the bodies of fighters as a purely humanitarian issue that should not be politicized by all parties, taking into account the values of Islamic law, humanitarian principles, and cultural and social norms.”
