Deadly clashes split ranks of Gulf allies in Yemen war

SEVERAL people were killed as Yemeni armed groups allied to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fought in the southern city of Aden yesterday, local medical staff said, deepening a rift between forces that had been on the same side.

The worst clashes yet between Uae-backed southern separatists and forces loyal to the Saudi-based government risk crippling their once united war effort against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen’s north. An unprecedented military adventure for the usually cautious Gulf states, the campaign in their much poorer and less politically stable neighbor was aimed at sending a decisive signal that they would oppose Iranian expansion in their midst.

But Yemen has been torn apart by three years of conflict and the factional fighting in the south compounds the misery.

Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher denounced moves by southern separatists as a coup, saying the situation was moving toward “a comprehensive military confrontation ... (which is) a direct gift to the Houthis and Iran”.

Gunmen were deployed throughout most districts of Aden yesterday and there was heavy automatic gunfire and explosions in the southern port city, according to Reuters witnesses.

Armed separatists wrested a key military base and several government buildings from soldiers loyal to President Abd-rabbu Mansour Hadi as residents reported that hundreds of Pro-southern demonstrators had gathered in a main square.

The clashes come as a dead- line imposed by the separatists for the government to resign expired on Sunday.

Although Hadi remains in exile in Saudi Arabia, his administration nominally controls about four-fifths of Yemen’s territory, but political and military leaders in Aden now want to revive the former independent state of South Yemen.