Bombing rocks Yemeni capital
Saudi airstrikes believed to be retaliation for killing of former president
SANAA, Yemen — Heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition rocked Yemen’s capital on Tuesday, striking Sanaa’s densely populated neighbourhoods in apparent retaliation for the killing of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh by the Shiite rebels who control the city.
Residents reported heavy bombing, and a UN official said at least 25 airstrikes hit the capital over the past 24 hours. The Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels had thrown its support behind Saleh just hours before his death, as the longtime strongman’s alliance with the rebels unravelled.
Saleh’s body, which had appeared in a video by the militias with a gaping head wound, was taken to a rebel-controlled military hospital. A rebel leader, speaking to a mass rally in Sanaa, said Saleh’s wounded sons had been hospitalized, without providing further details.
The gruesome images from the previous day sent shock waves among Saleh’s followers — a grisly end recalling that of his contemporary, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, in 2011.
Saleh’s son Salah said on Facebook Tuesday that he won’t receive condolences for his father’s death until “after avenging the blood” of the former leader. Salah also urged his father’s followers to fight their former allies, the Shiite rebels known as Houthis.
Arab League chief Ahmed AboulGheit meanwhile denounced Saleh’s “assassination” at the hands of “criminal militias,” and warned of a further escalation of the war and Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. A spokesman quoted AboulGheit as saying the international community should label the Houthis a “terrorist” organization.
“All means should be tackled for the Yemeni people to get rid of this black nightmare,” he said.
Iran, which supports the Houthis but denies arming them, welcomed Saleh’s killing, saying it had put an end to a Saudi conspiracy. “He got what he deserved,” Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Iran’s supreme leader, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Saleh’s slaying likely gives the rebels the upper hand in the clashes in Sanaa, which ended after his death, while also dashing the hopes of Yemen’s Saudi-backed government that the former president’s recent split with the Iranian-allied Houthis would have weakened them.
Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, a rebel leader, said Tuesday that “some sons” of Saleh have been hospitalized, without providing further details. Speaking before the large rally, al-Houthi said that Saleh was “deceived . . . we hadn’t hoped for what happened.”
The end of the alliance between the Houthis and Saleh might have tilted the three-year civil war in favour of Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the Saudi-led coalition.
But with Saleh’s forces seemingly in disarray, it was not immediately clear if the Saudi-led coalition would be able to turn the split to its advantage. Many Sanaa residents remained hunkered down in their homes, fearing the rebels and the Saudi airstrikes, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety.