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| Arabia | |
| Yemen's Iran hospital closed for backing rebels | |
| 2009-10-14 | |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] The Iranian Hospital in the Yemeni capital Sanaa was sealed off by security forces on Tuesday amid allegations staff have been aiding Shiite rebels fighting the army in the north, an AFP reporter said. Security forces surrounded the Iran-funded hospital and prevented patients from entering the five-storey building, which employs 120 people including eight Iranians, the reporter said.
The Yemeni authorities accuse "certain parties in Iran" of supporting the rebels, a charge Tehran denies while expressing sympathy for the rebels' cause. Officials at the Ministry of Waqf (religious endowments), which owns the building, said that the hospital is to be closed down due to a delay in the payment of an accumulated rent of 28 million dollars. The hospital offered patients services at prices that are usually lower than public and private institutions. The rebels, also known as Huthis, have been clashing with government forces on and off in the rugged northern mountains of the Saada province and surrounding areas since 2004. They complain of being marginalized and oppressed by the government, which accuses them of seeking to reinstate a form of clerical rule that ended in a republican coup in 1962. | |
| Posted by:Fred |