Riyadh has turned down Tehran's offers to facilitate a political solution to the civil war in Yemen, Press TV reported, citing Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
“At the beginning of the crisis in Yemen in 2013, I wrote a letter to former Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faysal with the aim of ending the crisis with the aid of Iran and Saudi Arabia. But they refused, saying that the Arab world's affairs do not concern Tehran,” Zarif told the BBC's Arabic language service on Sunday.
He said that negotiations and domestic dialogue between the warring factions in Yemen hold the key to a long-lasting solution to the crisis and that
Just as he spoke, at least 12 people, including women and children, were reportedly killed when Saudi fighter jets targeted an area in southern Yemen.
The airstrike followed a series of earlier reported attacks, which left four people dead in the west of the war-torn country.
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According to Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights, an estimated 600,000 civilians have been killed or injured since the start of the Saudi-led military operation in March 2015 to crush the Houthi rebellion and reinstate president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Yemen has been engulfed in a violent conflict between President Hadi’s government and the Houthi movement in the country's north, also known as Ansar Allah.
