Southern separatists clashed yesterday with presidential guards in Aden, the seat of Yemen’s government, and one person was killed and at least two badly injured, local officials and residents told Reuters.
The violence highlighted a rift within the Saudi-backed coalition battling the Houthi movement in a more than four-year war that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Yemen to the brink of famine.
The separatists and the internationally-recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi are nominally united in their battle against the Houthis.
But they have rival agendas for Yemen’s future, and a missile strike in Aden last week that killed dozens of southern soldiers raised friction between them.
Just before yesterday’s clash, hundreds of separatist supporters attended a funeral for some of the southern soldiers and a prominent commander near the hilltop presidential palace.
As the crowd chanted anti-government slogans, shooting was exchanged with presidential guards.
The identities of the one dead and two injured people were not immediately known.
After the funeral, the vice-president of the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC), Hani Ali Brik, called on supporters to march on the palace and overthrow the government, but there was no sign such a march had begun.
Yemen’s interior minister Ahmed al-Mayssari said the government had so far practised restraint to maintain stability in Aden but was “fully ready” to combat any actions targeting the state’s institutions.
“We call on the Yemeni people not to respond to such calls as they only aim for war and only serve the Houthis,” said Maysarri.
The United Nations’ special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, expressed concern about the flare-up in Aden. “I am alarmed by the military escalations in Aden today, including reports of clashes in the vicinity of the Presidential Palace. I am also deeply concerned by the recent rhetoric encouraging violence against Yemeni institutions,” he tweeted.
The southern port city is the temporary home of Hadi’s government, though he himself is in Saudi Arabia and the presidential palace is largely empty apart from soldiers.
Yesterday’s fracas came after the STC on Tuesday alleged that an Islamist party that is an important ally of Hadi was complicit in last week’s killing of the Security Belt soldiers.
“The people of the south are all on the street. This is a movement by the people that cannot be stopped, except with the government’s downfall,” said one mourner, Abdelhakim Tabaza.
Yemen’s southern separatists sit in the back of a vehicle with a coffin of Brigadier General Muneer al-Yafee killed in a Houthi missile attack, during a funeral in Aden yesterday.
