Amir condoles loss of Saudi pilot
KUWAIT CITY, Sept 14, (Agencies): His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah AlAhmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on Thursday sent his deepest condolences to Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz over the death of a Saudi pilot in Yemen, whose aircraft crashed as he took part in military action.
His Highness the Amir’s sentiments were articulated in a cable he sent to the Saudi King, in which he extended his sympathies over the death of Muhanna Al-Baiz, who was lionized for his contributions to the fight against terrorism. His Highness the Deputy Amir and Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah sent similar cables.
The Saudi pilot was killed while providing air support for an operation against al-Qaeda militants, a Saudi-led coalition backing the government said on Thursday.
The Saudi Royal Air Force plane crashed in the southern province of Abyan on Wednesday night “due to a technical failure,” coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki told the official Saudi Press Agency.
On the ground, coalition-backed Yemeni forces managed to drive alQaeda militants from Abyan’s Wadea district on Thursday, symbolic as the birthplace of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
Abyan was a no-go zone for progovernment troops for months after alQaeda fighters regrouped there following a similar offensive in neighbouring Shabwa province last month.
Security sources told AFP the jihadists had not put up much resistance but instead withdrew — a now familiar pattern for al-Qaeda in Yemen.
“Most of the organisation’s leaders fled ... and headed towards the nearby Muhafid district,” the sources said, referring to an al-Qaeda stronghold on the edge of Abyan province.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, seen by the United States as the network’s most dangerous branch, has exploited years of conflict between the government and Shiite rebels who control the capital to expand its presence.
The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015, when Hadi fled into exile as the rebels threatened to overrun his last stronghold.
Despite the support of the coalition’s firepower, the writ of Hadi’s government is still largely confined to the south and areas along the Saudi border.
The United Nations is in the process of expanding its role in southern Yemen, UN humanitarian coordinator Jamie McGoldrick said in Aden on Thursday.
“We are bringing in more internationals to be based here and also to go to the provinces to support the humanitarian needs in those places,” McGoldrick told reporters at Aden airport.
The coordinator said he met Yemen’s prime minister to discuss the humanitarian situation and logistics during his visit to the city.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government declared Aden its capital in mid-2015, after being driven out of Sanaa by Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels.
The government has been supported by a Saudi-led military coalition since March 2015, and since then more than 8,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The war has left 17 million people facing dire food shortages including nearly seven million who are one step away from famine in the country, which is heavily dependent on food imports.
“We expressed the need for the ministries here and elsewhere to be functioning properly, for budgets to be given to them so they can do their work,” said McGoldrick.
“The UN and international community cannot replace these ministries. We’re only here for the emergency side of things,” he said, highlighting the country’s cholera epidemic and food security.
The government last year moved the central bank from rebel-held Sanaa to Aden, a move the UN said caused more than one million civil servants to stop receiving their salaries, pushing more families toward starvation.
McGoldrick said he met with officials from the Arab coalition.
“We visited the Emirati base and met with the coalition forces — the Emiratis and the Saudis — and we had a chat about the current situation and our expansion plans and what their own activities look like,” he said, without elaborating.