Arab coalition warplanes ramped up pressure on Shiite rebels in Yemen yesterday with a fifth night of air strikes, as a Chinese naval flotilla evacuated citizens from the conflict-riven country.
The Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition has vowed to keep up the raids until the Iranian-backed rebels abandon their insurrection against Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh.
Fighter jets roared in the skies above Sana’a from 9pm on Sunday until about 5:30am yesterday, a Agence France-Presse correspondent reported.
Photo: AFP
Positions held by the Houthis rebels and soldiers of the renegade Republican Guard overlooking the presidential palace were believed to have been targeted.
A Republican Guard camp in south Sana’a was also hit, witnesses said.
“It was a night from hell,” a Yemeni diplomat said.
In the area around Marib, 140km east of Sana’a, radar facilities and surface-to-air missile batteries were targeted, local officials said.
In western Yemen, anti-aircraft defenses were struck in the port city of Hodeida, as well as several military positions farther south along the coast, residents said.
The Houthis are backed by army units loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 after a year of bloody protests in the deeply tribal country.
Officials yesterday said that the ex-strongman’s son had been sacked as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the coalition.
Ahmed Ali Saleh was relieved of his duties at the demand of the emirates, according to a Gulf diplomatic official who did not want to be named.
A Hadi aide confirmed the president had dismissed Ahmed Ali Saleh, who was appointed to the post after his father’s overthrow, but is believed to have remained in Yemen.
The Houthis and allied renegade military units have overrun much of Yemen and prompted Hadi to flee what had been his last remaining refuge in Aden.
Iran-allied Houthi militia pushed into the northeastern suburbs of Aden yesterday amid heavy clashes with Hadi loyalists, sources on both sides said.
Artillery and rocket fire struck the area around the Alam roundabout near the city’s airport, Hadi’s fighters said, after the Houthis advanced along a coastal road.
A Chinese People’s Liberation Army naval detachment, which had been carrying out anti-piracy escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters, was sent to Yemen on Sunday to pull Chinese nationals from the country, China’s Ministry of National Defence said in a statement.
About 122 Chinese were evacuated from Yemen to Djibouti, and authorities were working to assist the more than 400 remaining Chinese, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said.
Additional reporting by Reuters and AP
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