UN Welcomes Houthi Bid to Halt Retaliatory Attacks on Saudi

Martin Griffiths’ comments Saturday came hours after the Houthi announcement, and a week after the revolutionary movement took credit for a strike that crippled a key oil facility in Saudi Arabia.

Griffiths called for “taking advantage of this opportunity and moving forward with all necessary steps to reduce violence, military escalation and unhelpful rhetoric,” AP reported.

On Friday, Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of the Houthi supreme political council, said the group would end all attacks on Saudi Arabia provided that the kingdom and its allies ended their attacks on Yemen.

He hoped that “the gesture would be answered by a stronger gesture” from the Saudis.

The Yemeni forces on September 14 launched drone attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry, including the world's biggest petroleum processing facility.

The attacks came in retaliation for the Saudi-led coalition’s continued aggression on the Arabian Peninsula country.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

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