(Reuters) -Yemen’s Houthi-run Foreign Ministry said United Nations officials’ legal immunities should not shield espionage activities, days after at least 11 U.N. personnel were arrested in the capital Sanaa.
The U.N. said on Sunday that Houthi rebels raided its premises in Sanaa and arrested U.N. staff following an Israeli strike that killed the prime minister of the Houthi-run government and several other ministers.
The ministry also accused the U.N. of bias, saying it condemned “legal measures taken by the government against spy cells involved in crimes,” but failed to denounce the Israeli attack, the Houthi-run news agency Saba reported on Wednesday.
Yemen has been split between a Houthi administration in Sanaa and a Saudi-backed government in Aden since the Iran-aligned Houthis seized Sanaa in late 2014, triggering a decade-long conflict.
The ministry added that Yemen respected “the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations … while emphasizing that these immunities do not protect espionage activities or those who engage in them, nor provide them with legal cover,” it added.
On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Houthis forcibly entered World Food Programme premises, seized U.N. property, and attempted to enter other U.N. offices in the capital.
(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Aden; Additional Reporting by Enas Alashray in Cairo;Editing by Rod Nickel)
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