Aden’s seizure exposes rift between Saudi Arabia and UAE

CAIRO — A Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen targeted its own allies with airstrikes on Sunday, a day after southern separatists seized control of the strategic port city of Aden, threatening to fracture the Saudi alliance and open a new front in the five-year conflict.

Even before the damage from those strikes had been assessed, the United Nations on Sunday said as many as 40 people had been killed and 260 injured in the previous four days of clashes in Aden that erupted on the eve of one of Islam’s holiest periods, Eid al-Adha. Tens of thousands of civilians in the Red Sea city nestled on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula have fled their homes, while many others remain trapped without basic necessities, said U.N. officials and aid workers.

“It is heartbreaking that during Eid al-Adha families are mourning the death of their loved ones instead of celebrating together in peace,” Lise Grande, the top U.N. humanitarian official Yemen, said in a statement. “Our main concern right now is to dispatch medical teams to rescue the injured.”

Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest nation, was already in the grips of what the U.N. has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The seizure of Aden has exposed divisions within a Sunni Muslim coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that intervened in the conflict in March 2015.

Together, they have been battling Iran-allied, Shiite rebels known as Houthis to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government and prevent Tehran from gaining regional influence.