HOUTHI REBELS PLAN TO OUST SALEH SOON, SAYS VICE PRESIDENT OF YEMEN
▶ Former president’s alliance with Iranian-backed militia is on shaky grounds after a recent breakdown in relations
Houthi rebels will try to oust former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in the coming days, according to the vice president of Yemen.
Gen Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar, president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi’s second in command, said the Houthi rebels, with whom Mr Saleh entered an alliance to govern the capital Sanaa, will try to edge him out after what appeared to be a breakdown in relations earlier this month.
He spoke to officials in the Marib governorate in North Yemen, saying it was “in the Houthis’ nature as told by their history” to back-stab those they are supposedly co-operating with, local reports claimed.
He said Houthi rebels would not have been able to rise through the ranks without flouting agreements and eliminating those with whom they might have been co-operating.
“It’s not their military might or their tactics but their ability to take advantage of opportunities [that has allowed them to rise in the ranks],” Gen Al Ahmar said.
The news came just days after Abdul Hakim Al Khaiwani, the deputy interior minister of Houthi-governed Sanaa, called for the capital to be placed under a state of emergency.
The Houthi rebels governing Sanaa called for the precaution after their militias clashed with forces belonging to Mr Saleh.
The former president, however, maintains that there are no divisions between his loyalists and the Houthi rebels.
The Arab Spring protests in 2011 forced Mr Saleh to stand down – but he kept control of sections of the military.
Since then, he has controlled Sanaa – with the Houthis – and fought against Yemeni government forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition supporting the internationally recognised government of Mr Hadi.
Relations between Saleh loyalists and the rebels seemed to have broken down last month over statements in which each accused the other of conspiring with “the enemy” by settling on a peace deal.
Meanwhile, Mansour Ahmed Al Mansour, the spokesman for the Joint Incidents Assessment Team, said on Tuesday that the Saudi-led coalition had committed only three mistakes resulting in the loss of human life since they intervened in the war in Yemen in 2015.
He denied reports by international organisations that there were a number of attacks on illegitimate targets.
The Saudi-led coalition, which includes the UAE, and Yemeni forces drove the Iranbacked rebels from much of southern Yemen, but the fighting became bogged down in Taez province and along the Red Sea coast.
The UN said that more than 8,400 people have been killed and more than three million displaced in Yemen’s civil war, pushing the country to the brink of famine and sparking a widespread and deadly cholera epidemic.
The World Health Organisation and Yemen’s health ministry said the cholera outbreak in the country has infected 612,703 people and killed 2,048 since it began in April.
Some districts are still reporting new cases.
But the overall spread of the epidemic has slowed in the past few months, with the number of suspected new cases having fallen to about 3,000 a day.
Saleh loyalists and the rebels each accused the other of conspiring with ‘the enemy’