Category: Yemen

AL MUKALLA, Yemen — Militants from Al Qaeda ’s affiliate in Yemen tightened their grip on this coastal city in the country’s south on Friday, driving soldiers away with mortar fire so that the city was left undefended, witnesses said. The Qaeda fighters first entered Al Mukalla on Thursday and seized crucial government buildings, including a presidential palace. On Friday, residents fled to the outskirts of the city, as military commanders and their troops abandoned their bases, leaving behind American-made Humvee vehicles and other equipment to be seized by looters or the advancing fighters from the affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The storming of Al Mukalla, Yemen’s fifth-largest city, was the group’s boldest attack since the start of a military offensive led by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis 10 days ago. The relative ease with which the militants captured large parts of the city raised fears of […]

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(Bloomberg) — Yemen’s Houthis seized an army base overlooking a key shipping lane in the Red Sea, while Saudi Arabia said its bombing campaign has contained the rebel advance toward the port of Aden. The Houthis on Tuesday took over the Bab al-Mandab base, near the strait of the same name that’s a major commercial waterway, according to Mahfouz Ahmed, a soldier at the facility. He said brigade commanders ordered troops to hand weapons to the Houthis, who started setting up anti-aircraft artillery around the base. Saudi Arabia has assembled a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries to carry out airstrikes against the Houthis and restore President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi to power. Hadi was driven out of the capital, Sana’a, by the Shiite rebels last month, and then fled his last stronghold in Aden as the Houthis continued to advance. Yemen’s Transport Minister Badr Basalmah said on Tuesday that Hadi, […]

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ADEN (Reuters) – Air raids by a Saudi-led coalition again hit Houthi militia targets across Yemen on Monday night, striking the group’s northern stronghold of Saadeh, the capital, Sanaa, and the central town of Yarim, residents and media said. "There were huge blazes in the mountains outside Sanaa. It looks like they hit a missile depot and it was on fire for half an hour or so. Then there was anti-aircraft fire until dawn," a Sanaa resident said. The strikes, which began on Thursday, are aimed at stopping the Houthis from taking more territory and pressing them and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh to negotiate a power-sharing deal with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Houthis are from a Yemeni Shi’ite sect and are allied to Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival. The Saudis and other Sunni Muslim countries in the region fear the advance of the Houthis will ultimately […]

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ADEN (Reuters) – Yemeni fighters loyal to the Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi clashed with Iranian-allied Houthi fighters on Sunday in downtown Aden, the absent leader’s last major foothold in the country. Hadi loyalists in the southern port city reported a gun battle in the central Crater district in which three people were killed, and said they recaptured the airport, which has changed hands several times in the last five days of fighting. The Health Ministry, loyal to the Houthi fighters who control the capital, said Saudi-led air strikes had killed 35 people and wounded 88 overnight. The figures could not be independently confirmed. The Houthi fighters, representing a Shi’ite minority that makes up around a third of Yemen’s population, emerged as the most powerful force in the Arab world’s poorest country last year when they captured the capital Sanaa. Saudi Arabia has rallied Sunni Muslim Arab countries in […]

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RIYADH (Reuters) – Air strikes in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia will continue until Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who left the country on Thursday, is able to rule, a Saudi military spokesman said on Sunday. Riyadh announced early on Thursday that it and nine other Sunni Muslim countries had commenced air strikes against the Shi’ite Houthi militia, who are allied to the kingdom’s main regional foe Iran. Iran, which denies helping the Houthis, has strongly condemned the offensive. "We will set the conditions necessary to allow the president and his government to run the country," said Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, spokesman for the coalition. "The Yemeni army was almost dismantled (by internal fractures after a 2011 uprising) … one of the conditions is for them to take over. We will continue to attack the militias, we will keep them under pressure, until the conditions become very favorable for […]

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ADEN (Reuters) – Iran-allied Houthi militiamen pushed into the northeastern outskirts of the Yemeni port city of Aden on Monday amid heavy clashes with loyalists of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, sources on both sides said. Artillery and rocket fire struck the area on the approaches to the city, Hadi’s fighters said, after the Houthis made a fresh advance from the east along an Arabian Sea coast road. Aden is Hadi’s last bastion of control in Yemen and remains besieged despite a fifth day of Saudi-led air strikes aimed at checking the Houthi gains. North of Aden, residents in the city of Dhalea said Houthi fighters backed by allied army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh shelled militia opponents with tanks and artillery. Five civilians were killed in heavy street fighting, they said. Saudi Arabia, backed by regional Sunni Muslim allies, launched an air campaign to support Hadi […]

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ADEN (Reuters) – Yemen’s Houthi rebels made broad gains in the country’s south and east on Friday despite a second day of Saudi-led air strikes meant to check the Iranian-backed militia’s efforts to overthrow President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Shi’ite Muslim Houthi fighters and allied army units gained their first foothold on Yemen’s Arabian Sea coast by seizing the port of Shaqra 100km (60 miles) east of Aden, residents told Reuters. Explosions and crackles of small gunfire rang out across Aden late on Friday as Houthis made a push on the southern port city’s airport, a witness said. The advances threaten Hadi’s last refuge in Yemen and potentially undermine the air campaign to support him. The spokesman for the Saudi-led operation, Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, told a news conference in Riyadh that defending the Aden government was the campaign’s "main objective". "The operation will continue as long as there is […]

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Houthi fighters in Sana’a protest against Saudi air strikes Shia Houthi rebels clashed with Saudi military units on Yemen ’s northern border on Friday. The rebels vowed to intensify their campaign for control of the country after a second night of air strikes by a coalition of regional Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia. Houthi fighters also clashed with rival militias in the south of the country. As the fighting intensified, president Abd-Rabbu Hadi, who this week fled the southern port city of Aden in the face of the Houthi advance, travelled to Egypt to attend a summit of Arab leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh. The president vowed to call for an Arab ”Marshall Plan” to rebuild his country once the Houthis have been ousted. Tensions grew on Friday as Saudi and Egyptian warships deployed to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait in an effort to stop Houthis taking control of […]

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Saudi Arabia leads airstrikes in Yemen View Photos The campaign, with a coalition of Arab nations, is an effort to dislodge Houthi rebels sweeping through Yemen. BEIRUT — The meltdown in Yemen is pushing the Middle East dangerously closer toward the wider regional conflagration many long have feared would arise from the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring revolts. What began as a peaceful struggle to unseat a Tunisian dictatorfour years ago and then mutated into civil strife now risks spiraling into a full-blown war between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran over a country that lies at the choke point of one of the world’s major oil supply routes. With negotiators chasing a Tuesday deadline for the framework of a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, it seems unlikely that Iran would immediately respond militarily to this week’s Saudi airstrikes in Yemen, analysts say. But the confrontation has […]

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ENLARGE People gather at the site of an airstrike on a residential area near San’a airport on Thursday. Photo: Reuters The conflict in Yemen is quickly devolving into a wider regional conflagration, pitting Shiite Iran and an allied militant group against Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states that came together to launch airstrikes on those militants. The coordinated Arab attacks led by Saudi Arabia began early Thursday morning and targeted the Shiite-linked Houthi militant group in Yemen. They followed weeks of talks on forging a joint military force to combat what some nations see as regional threats from Iran coupled with a U.S. reluctance to intervene. Saudi Arabia, Shiite Iran’s main rival for power in the Middle East, conducted the first round of strikes against the Houthis. In the early hours of Friday, residents of the capital San’a reported an intense barrage of explosions as a second round […]

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