A Saudi-led coalition yesterday launched a strike against southern separatists in Yemen after they seized the presidential palace in Aden in deadly fighting.
The seizure, decried by the Riyadh-backed Yemeni government as a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-supported coup, reflects deep divisions between secessionists and loyalist forces, both of whom have fought Shiite Houthi rebels.
“The coalition targeted an area that poses a direct threat to one of the important sites of the legitimate government,” a coalition statement said, calling on the separatist Southern Transitional Council to withdraw from positions seized in Aden or face further attacks.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It did not specify the target, but residents in Aden told reporters that it was an airstrike against separatist camps in the city.
Riyadh-based Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi is backed by the coalition — led by Saudi Arabia and its ally, the UAE — that is battling the Iran-aligned Houthis.
However, another force in the anti-Houthi coalition — the UAE-trained Security Belt Force — has since Wednesday been battling loyalists in Aden, the temporary base of Hadi’s government.
The Security Belt Force is dominated by fighters who back the Southern Transitional Council, which seeks to restore south Yemen as an independent state as it was from 1967 to 1990.
The International Crisis Group think tank warned that the Aden clashes “threaten to tip southern Yemen into a civil war within a civil war.”
“Such a conflict would deepen what is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” it said.
The coalition called for an “immediate ceasefire” and the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has demanded an “urgent meeting” between the warring parties.
The Yemeni government and separatists said yesterday that they backed Riyadh’s call for dialogue and a suspension of fighting.
However, in a sermon to mark the start of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, Southern Transitional Council vice president Hani bin Breik said that his group would not “negotiate under threat.”
Saudi Arabian Deputy Minister of Defense Khalid bin Salman also called for an “immediate cessation of hostilities and withdrawal from all forcefully occupied locations in Aden.”
A Security Belt official on Saturday told reporters that the force had seized the presidential palace, which is largely symbolic, due to Hadi’s absence, without a fight.
“Two hundred soldiers from the Presidential Guard were given safe passage out of the palace,” the official said.
A witness confirmed that the complex had been handed over.
Yemen’s government earlier blamed the Southern Transitional Council and the UAE for staging a “coup” against it.
The foreign ministry demanded that “the UAE halt its material support and withdraw its military support, immediately and fully, from the groups that have rebelled against the state.”
A Southern Transitional Council spokesman said that the council was working to restore the water network, which was damaged in the fighting.
Ties between the Security Belt and Hadi loyalists have been strained for years and this week was not the first time they have engaged in armed clashes.
They fought a three-day battle in January last year that killed 38 people and wounded 222 after the government prevented a rally by separatists.
The Security Belt has accused Hadi’s backers of allowing Islamists into their ranks and of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 to back the government against the Houthis, who are supported by Riyadh’s regional rival Iran.
The Houthis had overrun large parts of northern and western Yemen, including the capital, Sana’a, which they still control.
UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said that Abu Dhabi was “exerting all efforts to de-escalate the situation,” Emirati state media reported.
The two camps should focus their efforts on fighting the Houthis instead of each other, he said.
The latest violence flared on Wednesday during the funeral of a senior Security Belt commander killed this month in a drone and missile attack on a training camp west of Aden.
The commander was among 36 people killed — many of them newly graduated cadets — in the aerial attack, claimed by the Houthis.
The UN human rights office later accused the Security Belt force of “reportedly carrying out and enabling retaliatory attacks against civilians.” from northern Yemen.
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