TEHRAN, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday denounced the Saudi-led coalition's attempt to pound Yemen in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Khamenei referred to the situation in the war-hit Yemen as a "big wound on the body of the Islamic Ummah (nation)," Tasnim news agency reported.
He made the remarks in an address to a gathering of Iranians in the capital Tehran after the Eid al-Fitr prayers on Monday.
The Islamic world, particularly Muslim intellectuals and clerics, must "renounce the oppressors and the cruelers for assaulting the people of Yemen in the month of Ramadan," he was quoted as saying.
The Yemeni war pits Iranian-allied Shiite Houthi rebels, backed by forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, against the government of President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, which is backed by Saudi-led Arab coalition.
The capital Sanaa and most of the northern provinces have been under control of Houthi rebels since September 2014.
The war has so far killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, half of them civilians, and displaced over two million others, according to UN humanitarian agencies.
