Yemen on edge of civil war
> UN Security Council to meet as Huthi rebels seize airport and US forces evacuate
ADEN: Yemen’s embattled president requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council with his violence-wracked country teetering on the edge of civil war, as Shiite militia seized the airport in a key central city yesterday and deteriorating security prompted Washington to evacuate personnel.
The impoverished nation is torn between a north controlled by Iranbacked Shiite Huthi rebels and a south dominated by allies of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled house arrest in Sanaa to Aden in February.
Hadi called for the Security Council meeting, to convene yesterday, after several suicide bombings at Shiite Huthi mosques claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group killed 142 people on Friday.
In his letter to the Council, Hadi denounced “the criminal acts of the Huthi militias and their allies,” saying they “not only threaten peace in Yemen but the regional and international peace and security”.
“I urge for your urgent intervention in all available means to stop this aggression that is aimed at undermining the legitimate authority, the fragmentation of Yemen and its peace and stability,” Hadi wrote.
Yemen has been torn by unrest since ex-strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in 2012 after a year-long popular uprising against him, with powerful armed groups sidelining the government since.
The country is now on the brink of civil war, with a deepening political impasse and an increasingly explicit territorial division along sectarian lines, with rising violence between the Huthi and Sunni tribes and Al-Qaeda.
Hadi pledged Saturday to fight Iranian influence in his country after US troops at the Al-Anad airbase were pulled out amid fighting involving Al-Qaeda militants nearby which left at least 29 dead.
Accusing the Huthis of importing Tehran’s ideology, Hadi lashed out at the Iran-backed militia after the mosque bombings, which also wounded 351 people.
The Huthis, who seized Sanaa in September, vowed to take further “revolutionary steps” following Friday’s blasts.
By claiming its first attack in Yemen, IS is seeking to exploit the chaos gripping the country where rival Al-Qaeda has traditionally been the dominant militant movement.
The Huthis and its allies yesterday seized the airport in the strategic Yemeni city of Taez from forces loyal to Hadi, security sources said.
Taez is located in central Yemen on the road between Sanaa and the southern city of Aden.
Control of the city would enable the Huthis and forces loyal to Saleh to tighten the noose on Hadi.
Some 300 men, including Huthi fighters dressed in military uniforms and so-called special forces have deployed at the airport as reinforcements continued to arrive from Sanaa by air and land, the source said. – AFP