Saleh’s son vows to get revenge on Houthi killers
IN RESPONSE to the killing of Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, his son has vowed to “confront enemies of the homeland”.
Ahmed Ali, a former commander of Yemen’s elite Republican Guards, was previously seen as a likely successor to his father.
Taking aim at the Iranaligned Houthi group that killed his father on Monday, Ahmed Ali said he would “confront the enemies of the homeland and humanity, who try to obliterate its identity ... and humiliate Yemen and Yemenis”.
The pledge gives the anti-Houthi movement in Sanaa a potential figurehead – something missing as Saleh’s supporters were forced out of the capital by the Houthis in the past week.
The Houthis who control Sanaa are ranged against a Saudi-led military alliance.
The civil war has brought on what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
It says millions of people may die in one of the worst famines of modern times, caused by warring parties blocking supplies of food and clean water.
Saleh had helped the Houthis win control of much of the country’s north.
His decision to switch allegiances and abandon the Houthis in the past week was the most dramatic change on the battlefield in years and cost him his life.