Saudi-backed troops on Saturday retook the resource-rich Yemeni province of Hadramawt, Yemen’s presidency said, after confrontations between forces backed by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi deepened a rift between the two Gulf allies.
The Saudis and Emiratis have long supported rival factions in Yemen’s fractious government, and an offensive by the UAE-backed secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) to capture Hadramawt last month angered Riyadh and left the oil-rich regional powers on a collision course.
Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council, in a statement said that Saudi-backed National Shield forces achieved “record success” in “retaking all military and security positions in the province” bordering Saudi Arabia in the operation launched on Friday.
Photo: AFP
Two government military officials also told reporters earlier that neighboring Mahra province and its armed forces, which had also fallen in with the STC during its recent advance, had switched their loyalty to Saudi-backed forces without any resistance.
One of the two officials said the Mahra forces had “lowered the separatist flag and raised the Yemeni flag.”
The Saudi-led coalition has launched repeated warnings and air strikes over the past week, including one on an alleged Emirati arms shipment to the STC.
On Friday, a strike on the Al-Khasha military camp in Hadramawt left 20 dead, according to the separatist group.
On Saturday, a military official with the STC said that Saudi warplanes had carried out “intense” air strikes on another of the group’s camps at Barshid, west of Mukalla.
The official said the strikes resulted in fatalities, without giving a number of those killed.
In a statement posted to social media, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for a “conference in Riyadh to bring together all southern factions to discuss just solutions to the southern cause.”
Riyadh said the Yemeni government had issued the invitation for talks.
Alimi called on the STC to “commit to the path of dialogue and to roll back its unilateral measures in the various governorates.”
Later the secessionist council in a statement said that it “affirms its welcome... for this dialogue and for any dialogue addressing the cause of the people of the South.”
Earlier on Saturday, the UAE urged Yemenis to “halt escalation and resolve differences through dialogue.”
In separate statements, the Gulf states of Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain voiced their support for dialogue in Riyadh.
Egypt’s foreign ministry also urged dialogue and voiced its support for the “unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Republic of Yemen.”
The STC has pushed to declare independence and form a breakaway state, which would split the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest state in two.
On Friday, the separatists announced the start of a two-year transitional period towards declaring an independent state and said the process would include dialogue and a referendum on independence.
STC President Aidaros Alzubidi said the transitional phase would include dialogue with Yemen’s north — controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels — and a referendum on independence.
However, he warned that the group would declare independence “immediately” if there was no dialogue or if southern Yemen was attacked again.
The Saudi-backed coalition was formed in 2015 in an attempt to dislodge the Houthi rebels from Yemen’s north, but after a brutal, decade-long civil war, the Houthis remain in place while the Saudi and Emirati-backed factions attack each other in the south.
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