TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticised Saudi Arabia's military involvement in Yemen's conflict, calling on Riyadh to play a mediator's role rather than to bomb fellow Muslims.
"I tell Saudi Arabian officials that it was expected of them to mediate in the domestic dispute ... and make peace ... not to get themselves involved in the war and use bombs and machine-guns against Muslims," he said.
"If a part of Saudi Arabia's weapons had been used in favour of Gaza people and against the Zionists (Israel) ... today there would no trace of the Zionist regime," Ahmadinejad added in a speech broadcast live on state television.
In Riyadh, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal swiftly shot back at Ahmadinejad, accusing the Iranians of interfering in Yemen's domestic affairs.
"This accusing Saudi Arabia of making war on the Huthis, I don't know where this comes from," Saud said, calling the charge "dubious."
"This is interfering in the internal affairs of Yemen," he said.
Officials in predominantly Shiite Iran have repeatedly condemned the Saudi involvement in a Yemeni military operation launched on August 11 against the Huthi insurgents, members of the Zaidi Shiite minority, in northern Yemen.
In mid-November, Ali Larijani, Iran's parliament speaker, accused Tehran's arch-foe Washington of masterminding the Saudi bombing of the rebels across the border in Yemen.
The Saudi military undertook its largest mobilisation since the 1991 Kuwait war following a Huthi border incursion in early November, deploying fighter bombers, heavy artillery, special forces and naval vessels against the rebels.
Ahmadinejad's charge came one day after the Saudi military said 82 of its soldiers had been killed and 21 were missing in 11 weeks of fighting Huthi militants along the two countries' border.
The Saudis say they have killed or captured several hundred Huthi fighters.
Prince Saud did not elaborate on his charge of Iranian interference, but Sanaa has accused elements in Tehran of giving military support to the Huthis in the mainly Sunni country, a charge denied by Iran.
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