Yemen’s Houthi rebels say ex-president Saleh killed
SANAA: The radio station of Yemen’s Houthi-controlled interior ministry said on Monday the militia’s former war ally, ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had been killed.
There was no independent confirmation as fierce combat battered the Yemeni capital. However, the radio added that the official Houthi TV station would soon broadcast footage of Saleh’s dead body while social media users in Yemen circulated unverified images of a corpse which resembled the ex-president.
Saleh’s party denied to Reuters that their leader had been killed and said he was still leading forces in heavy fighting in Sanaa that has killed at least 125 people and wounded 238 in six days, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
His whereabouts were unknown and he has made no public appearances since the reports of his death surfaced.
Earlier on Monday, Houthi forces blew up Saleh’s house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.
The Saudi-led air campaign, backed by US and other Western arms and intelligence, has killed hundreds of civilians but has failed to secure the coalition any major gains in the nearly threeyear-old campaign to restore Yemen’s internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power.
Saleh’s loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban warfare with the Iran-allied Houthi militia during which the casualty toll has rapidly mounted in Sanaa.
The re-alignment of Saleh’s forces with the Saudis would mark a significant turn in a war that is part of a wider struggle between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Saleh, who dominated Yemen’s heavily armed tribal society for 33 years before quitting in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, and the Shia Muslim Houthis had made common cause against Hadi loyalists.
But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014. In a speech late on Sunday, Saleh formally annulled his alliance with the Houthis and pledged to step up his fight, and their feud burst into open combat on Wednesday.