The Saudi-led coalition has intervened in Aden to support the Yemeni government after southern separatists effectively took over the port city, fracturing an alliance that had been focused on battling the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.
The Sunni Muslim coalition said it attacked an area that posed a “direct threat” to the Saudi-backed government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is temporarily based in Aden.
It did not specify the site, but a local official told Reuters it had targeted separatist forces surrounding the nearly empty presidential palace in the Crater district. Hadi is based in Riyadh.
“This is only the first operation and will be followed by others … the Southern Transitional Council (STC) still has a chance to withdraw,” Saudi state TV quoted it as saying.
The alliance had threatened military action if the separatists did not quit government military camps they seized in the city on Saturday, after four days of clashes that killed at least nine civilians, and halt fighting.
STC Vice-President Hani Ali Brik, writing in a Twitter post marking a Muslim holiday that began on Sunday, said that while the Council remained committed to the coalition it would “not negotiate under duress”. It had earlier agreed to a truce.
The United Arab Emirates-backed separatists have a rival agenda to Hadi’s government over the future of Yemen, but they have been a key part of the coalition that intervened in the Arabian Peninsula nation in 2015 against the Houthis after the group ousted Hadi from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014.
Read the article by Mohammed Mukhashef (AAP) in The West Australian.