News - Yemen: The Minister of Defense Major General Mohammad Nasser Al-Atefi said on Saturday that the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab, the Gulf of Aden and their territorial waters are an exclusive Yemeni area, and Yemen's maritime sovereignty over them is complete.

“We are responsible for providing the necessary protection for it and securing regional and international navigation,” the Minister of Defense confirmed during a visit to the Fifth Military Region in the western coast. "The time of guardianship over Yemen has passed forever."

He explained that the situation today, and at this stage, is heading towards calm and reaching a comprehensive peace.

“All of this depends on the sincerity of the intentions of the leaders of the coalition of aggression, with what has been agreed upon with the revolutionary leadership and the Supreme Political Council, and commitment to these understandings for the benefit of the region and its people, and foremost regional and international interests,” he added.

The Minister of Defense warned the countries involved in aggression against any circumvention in dealing with these understandings.

“Any breach or evasion of any agreement or understanding will result in loss for the aggression, and will cause it to end in endless predicaments,” he added.

"Our sincere advice to the aggression, and to those who allied with them, is that they learn from previous lessons because our guns, cannons, missiles and drones are ready,” Al-Atefi said. “They must make sure that the upcoming battles will not be inside Yemen, as they imagine, but will be in the joints of the distant depth of the countries involved in aggression, which will make them well aware of the meaning of great pain.”

He pointed out that what is happening today in terms of talks with the countries involved in aggression, and what is proposed by the revolutionary leadership represented by Sayyed Abdulmalik Badr al-Din al-Houthi, who manages the stage's data with wisdom, farsightedness, breadth and horizon, puts the interest of the Yemeni People in priority, as well as laying solid building blocks for security and stability in Yemen and the region.

Saudi and Omani delegations held talks earlier this month with officials in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a, with the progress of the talks lauded by several parties. 

President Mahdi Al-Mashat further stated that the next round of talks with Saudi Arabia would begin following the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday, marking the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The previous talks ended hours before 318 prisoners were transported on four flights on April 14 between the southern Yemeni port city of Aden and Sana’a, reuniting detainees with their families.

Sana'a and Saudi-backed parties agreed at negotiations in Switzerland last month to free 887 detainees and to meet again in May to discuss further releases. The deal was overseen by the United Nations envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, and the ICRC.

Saudi Arabia launched its brutal war of aggression against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its regional allies along with plenty of arms deliveries and logistics support from the US and several other Western governments to reinstall former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who resigned from the presidency in late 2014 and later fled to Riyadh.

However, the Saudi-led military aggression has stopped well shy of all of its objectives, despite leaving  tens of thousands of Yemenis killed and many more starved and displaced, turning the entire country into what is widely recognized as the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.