Agencies
Aden
Houthi militia forces in Yemen backed by allied army units seized an air base yesterday and appeared close to capturing the southern port of Aden from defenders loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, residents said.
The US said that Hadi, who has been holed up in Aden since fleeing the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa last month, was no longer at his residence. It offered no other details on his movements.
After taking al-Anad air base, the Houthis and their military allies, supported by heavy armour, advanced to within 20km of Aden.
Soldiers at Aden’s Jabal al-Hadeed barracks fired into the air to prevent residents from entering the base and arming themselves, witnesses said, suggesting that Hadi’s control over the city was fraying.
Houthi fighters and allied military units had advanced to Dar Saad, a village a half-hour’s drive from central Aden, residents there said.
Earlier, unidentified warplanes fired missiles at the Aden neighbourhood where Hadi’s compound is located, residents said. Anti-aircraft batteries opened fire on the planes.
The city’s airport was closed and all flights were cancelled for security reasons, guards at the facility said.
Yemen’s slide towards civil war has made the country a crucial front in Saudi Arabia’s rivalry with Iran, which Riyadh accuses of stirring up sectarian strife through its support for the Houthis.
Arab states around Yemen have condemned the Shia Houthi takeover as a coup and have mooted a military intervention in favour of Hadi in recent days.
US officials say Saudi Arabia is moving heavy military equipment including artillery to areas near its border with Yemen.
Saudi sources said the build-up, which also included tanks, was purely defensive.
While the battle for Aden is publicly being waged by the Houthi movement, many there believe that the real instigator of the campaign is former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a fierce critic of Hadi.
It was Saleh who was the author of Aden’s previous humiliation in 1994, when as president he crushed a southern secessionist uprising in a short war.
Unlike other regional leaders deposed in the Arab Spring, Saleh was allowed to remain in the country.
Army loyalists close to Saleh yesterday warned against foreign interference, saying on his party website that Yemen would confront such a move “with all its strength”.
Diplomats say they suspect the Houthis want to take Aden before an Arab summit this weekend, to pre-empt an expected attempt by Hadi ally Saudi Arabia to rally Arab support at the gathering for military intervention in Yemen.
Yemeni officials denied reports that Hadi had fled Aden.
The US State Department said Washington had been in touch with Hadi but was not able to say where he is.
“We were in touch with him earlier today,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.
“He is no longer at his residence, which you’ve seen in reporting... I am not in a position to confirm any additional details from here about his location. We have been in touch with him over the last several days.”
The Arab League will today discuss a proposal by Yemen’s foreign minister, who called on Arab states to intervene militarily to halt the Houthi advance, the regional body’s deputy secretary general said.
Yemen’s foreign minister said yesterday that if rebels seize Aden it will mean the “start of civil war”.
Riyad Yassin, speaking in Egypt, also warned against an eventual “domination of the entire Arabian peninsula by Iran.”
The Houthi advance was taking its toll. The bodies of fighters from both sides lay on the streets of the outskirts of Houta, capital of Lahej province north of Aden, residents said.
In Houta, storefronts were shuttered and residents reported hearing bursts of machine gun fire and saw the bodies of fighters from both sides lying in the streets.
Witnesses said Houthi fighters and allied soldiers largely bypassed the city centre and travelled by dirt roads to the southern suburbs facing Aden.
In Aden, heavy traffic clogged Aden as parents brought schoolchildren home and public sector employees obeyed orders to leave work. Witnesses said pro-Hadi militiamen and tribal gunmen were out in force throughout the city.
“The war is imminent and there is no escape from it,” said 21-year-old Mohamed Ahmed, standing outside a security compound in Aden’s Khor Maksar district, where hundreds of young men have been signing up to fight the advancing Shia fighters.