AFP
Aden
A coalition of Arab states vowed to co-ordinate political and military efforts to restore order in Yemen as Saudi-led warplanes yesterday launched new air strikes on Houthi Shia rebels.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and armed forces chief of the United Arab Emirates, said the coalition is now working on military and political fronts to reestablish the legitimate authority in Sanaa.
The campaign’s new phase is based on a “multilayered strategy, including military, as well as politics and development, to re-establish the legitimacy”, he said on a visit to his troops in Saudi Arabia taking part in the coalition.
“We have no other choice but to succeed in the test of Yemen,” Sheikh Mohamed said, quoted in UAE daily Al-Ittihad.
In New York, the UN Security Council went into closed-door consultations on the crisis in Yemen and to hear former envoy Jamal Benomar give a final report.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was to meet his Iranian counterpart, said he would urge Mohamed Javad Zarif to help ease the violence in Yemen, warning the country’s future should not be decided by “external parties”.
The Saudi government said yesterday the nine Arab countries that make the coalition want to help Yemen “reinstate security and stability, away from any hegemony or foreign meddling that aims to foment sedition and sectarianism”.
Yemen is expected to be the focus of a meeting of Gulf foreign ministers on Thursday, ahead of a leaders’ summit on May 5.
The meeting in Riyadh would cover “issues vital to the operations of the Gulf Co-operation Council and developments in the region, including the crisis in Yemen,” said GCC secretary general Abdullatif Zayani.
The latest air raids hit five schools converted by the Houthis into military bases in Ataq, the capital of the southern province of Abyan, military sources said.
Also in Abyan, warplanes targeted rebel positions on the outskirts of Loder, the province’s second largest city, they said.
Clashes were ongoing southwest of Loder between rebels and forces that have sided with the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the sources added.
Fierce fighting also raged in the central city of Taez, with the warring parties using tanks and rocket-propelled grenades inside residential areas.
The UN says more than 1,000 people have been killed in fighting in Yemen since late March, when Riyadh assembled the coalition in support of Hadi.
Hadi asked for Gulf intervention after the rebels closed in on his refuge in the southern port city of Aden after they had overrun several provinces since September, including the capital.
Saudi Arabia says it has started deploying National Guard troops on its border with Yemen, joining members of the Saudi border guard and army who have reinforced the frontier since late March.
The vanguard of National Guard troops “have arrived in Najran region to participate in the defence of the southern borders... so as to confront any possible threats”, the official Saudi Press Agency said.
