Saudi, UAE envoys bid to end standoff in Yemen's Aden

ADEN, YEMEN — Saudi and Emirati envoys shuttled between Yemeni government forces and besieging southern separatists in second city Aden yesterday in a bid to end a tense standoff after days of deadly infighting.

The Sunday assault on the embattled government's headquarters by its former allies has opened up a new front in the devastating civil war that has created what the United Nations says is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the two major contributors to a military coalition that has backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi since he fled into exile in 2015.

But they have struggled to keep together the disparate alliance supporting him against Huthi Shiite rebels who control the capital Sanaa and much of the north.

South Yemen was an independent country until union with the north in 1990 and Hadi has relied heavily on militia that support its restoration.

Many of them have been recruited into special forces units trained by the UAE to fight Al-Qaeda, which has a large presence in parts of the south.

On Wednesday, those forces deployed across Aden bringing a lull in the deadly clashes that had forced a halt to the distribution of desperately needed relief supplies for days.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have not abandoned their support for Hadi, who lives in exile in Riyadh, but they have singularly failed to intervene militarily in support of Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher and other ministers who are holed up under siege in the presidential palace in Aden.

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE Fighters from Yemen’s southern separatist movement sit in the back of a pick-up truck in the country’s second city of Aden, during clashes with forces loyal to the Saudi-backed president.