Neil Hope, the Chargé d’Affaires of the US embassy in Yemen, signalled his support for the Saudi-backed Yemeni government’s fight against the Houthis in a meeting with the vice president of the Presidential Leadership Council, Abdulrahman al-Mahrami, in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, on Monday.

Hope condemned what he described as “deliberate attacks targeting Yemeni civilians” and said that al-Mahrami leads “one of the most effective forces in the fight for freedom against Iranian hegemony through its proxies in Yemen”.