Yemen's Houthis seize central Aden district, presidential site

(GNN) - Yemeni Houthi fighters and their allies seized a central Aden district on Thursday, striking a heavy blow against the Saudi-led coalition which has waged a week of air strikes to try to stem advances by the Iran-allied Shi'ite group.

Hours after the Houthis took over Aden's central Crater neighborhood, they marked another symbolic victory by fighting their way into a presidential residence overlooking the neighborhood, residents said.

The southern city has been the last major holdout of fighters loyal to the Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled Aden a week ago and has watched from Riyadh as the vestiges of his authority have crumbled.

By nightfall the Iran-allied Shi'ite fighters had reached the edge of Aden's port district of Mualla, they said.

The Houthis and their supporters swept into the heart of Aden despite an eight-day air campaign led by Riyadh trying to stem their advances and ultimately return Hadi to power.

By midday on Thursday they were in control of Crater neighborhood, deploying tanks and foot patrols through its otherwise empty streets after heavy fighting in the morning.

It was the first time fighting on the ground had reached so deeply into central Aden. Crater is home to the local branch of Yemen's central bank and many commercial businesses.

"People are afraid and terrified by the bombardment," one resident, Farouq Abdu, told Reuters by telephone from Crater. "No one is on the streets - it's like a curfew".

Hadi loyalists had few heavy weapons to halt the Houthi advance, although the remains of one smoldering tank in Crater showed they had put up a staunch defense in some places.

Aden residents reported three air strikes against a Houthi position north of Crater on Thursday, and a fourth at the presidential residence shortly after they took control of it.

Another resident said Houthi snipers deployed on a mountain overlooking Crater and fired on the streets below. Several houses caught fire after being struck by rockets, and messages relayed on loudspeakers urged residents to move out to safer parts of the city, he said.

After the advance in Crater, unidentified armed men disembarked from a vessel off Mualla. A port official said they were armed guards from a Chinese warship taking evacuees from the city. Yemeni and Saudi officials said there was no coalition ground operation in Aden.

China's Xinhua news agency said a Chinese missile frigate evacuated 225 people, all non-Chinese nationals, from Aden on Thursday to Djibouti.

"ADEN WEAK POINT"

The Houthis, who took over the capital Sanaa six months ago in alliance with supporters of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, turned on Aden last month.

A diplomat in Riyadh said the city had come to symbolize Hadi's fading authority, meaning that Saudi Arabia could not afford to allow it to fall completely under Houthi control. But he said Riyadh's air campaign was so far geared more toward a slow war of attrition than an effective defense.

"Saleh and the Houthis are keeping the pressure on Aden, which is the weak point in Saudi strategy," he said. "I think the Saudis would put ground forces into Aden to recapture it if it falls. It is a red line for them."

The war on the Houthis is now the biggest of multiple conflicts being fought out in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest state, also grappling with a southern secessionist movement, tribal unrest and a powerful regional wing of al Qaeda.

The fighting has forced Washington to evacuate U.S. personnel from the country, one of the main battlefields in the secret American drone war against al Qaeda.

Huge street demonstrations in 2011 linked to wider Arab uprisings forced veteran leader Saleh to step down, but he has re-emerged as an influential force by allying himself with the Houthis, his former enemies.

The Houthis are drawn from a Zaidi Shi'ite minority that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in northern Yemen until 1962. Saleh himself is a member of the sect but fought to crush the Houthis as president.

Coalition jets struck a military base controlled by Houthi and pro-Saleh fighters in the Bab el-Mandeb strait, at the entrance to the Red Sea on Thursday, officials said.

In the Arabian Sea port of Mukalla, 500 km (300 miles) east of Aden, suspected al Qaeda fighters stormed the central prison and freed 150 prisoners, some of them al Qaeda detainees, sources in the local police and administration said.

They named one of the escapees as Khaled Batarfi, a provincial al Qaeda leader who was arrested four years ago. Soldiers loyal to Hadi clashed with the suspected al Qaeda fighters in Mukalla early on Thursday, residents said.

In Dhalea, 100 km (60 miles) north of Aden, where militia fighters from the south have battled Houthis for several days, residents said the militia were in control of the town but Houthis were sniping from rooftops.

Residents also reported air strikes overnight on the coastal town of Shaqra, which is under Houthi control and lies on the coast between Aden and Mukalla.

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Cairo, Angus McDowall in Riyadh, Amena Bakr in Dubai, Emily Stephenson in Washington and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Dominic Evans, Editing by William Maclean and Angus MacSwan)

Houthis seize strategic Yemeni city, escalating power struggle

(GNN) - Houthi fighters opposed to Yemen's president took over the central city of Taiz in an escalation of a power struggle diplomats say risks drawing in neighboring oil giant Saudi Arabia and its main regional rival Iran.

Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, head of the powerful Shi'ite Muslim group, vowed to pursue Sunni militants behind suicide attacks on Houthi supporters and said the poor Arabian peninsula country was in danger of descending into Libya-style turmoil.

In a live televised speech, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi said his decision to mobilize fighters amid accelerating violence in recent days was aimed against Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for bombings that killed more than 130 in the capital Sanaa on Friday, and against al Qaeda.

Conflict has been spreading across Yemen since last year when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and effectively removed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who now seeks a comeback from his base in Aden.

Residents of Taiz, on a main road from the capital Sanaa to the country's second city of Aden, said that Houthi militias took over the city's military airport without a struggle from local authorities late on Saturday.

Eyewitnesses in the central province of Ibb reported seeing dozens of tanks and military vehicles headed southward from Houthi-controlled areas toward Taiz, while activists in the city said Houthi gunmen shot into the air to disperse protests by residents demonstrating against their presence.

The advance of the Iranian-backed group has angered Sunni Gulf Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.

The Houthi expansion into mostly Sunni areas in the center and west has led to months of clashes with local tribes and al Qaeda, raising fears that the heavily armed country might descend into civil war.

INTERVENTION

Iran on Sunday called for dialogue, but suggested that Hadi should leave to spare the country further bloodshed.

"The expectation is that President ... Hadi will resign rather than repeat mistakes, to play a constructive role in preventing the break-up of Yemen and the transformation of Aden into a terrorist haven," said Iran's deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, according to state news agency IRNA.

But Gulf Arab leaders and security officials on Saturday said Hadi was Yemen's legitimate ruler and they were ready to make "all efforts" to defend the country's security.

"Yemen is sliding into a dark tunnel which would have serious consequences not only on Yemen but on security and stability in the region," the officials, who included Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, said.

"The security of Yemen and of the GCC countries is an indivisible whole," it added.

ESCALATING VIOLENCE

Yemen's struggle for power intensified on Thursday, when loyalists and opponents of Hadi fought gun battles in Aden.

On Sunday, anti-aircraft guns opened fire at an unidentified plane flying over Hadi's compound in Aden, witnesses said, in the third incident of its kind since last Thursday.

U.S. officials said Washington had evacuated its remaining personnel from Yemen, including around 100 special operations forces, because of worsening security, marking a setback in U.S. efforts against a powerful al Qaeda branch.

The Houthis are allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, still influential in the military despite having given up power in 2011 after mass protests against his rule. The Yemeni army has varied loyalties, with most units being controlled by the Houthis or Saleh, while some are loyal to Hadi.

In his speech, Houthi criticized the U.N. Security Council, saying it was led by countries plotting "evil" against others.

Houthi did not elaborate. But diplomats in New York said the council would on Sunday condemn the takeover of much of Yemen and its institutions by the Shi'ite Muslim Houthis and warn of "further measures" if hostilities do not end.

Houthi also accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar - two among several Gulf Arab states opposed to the Houthis' rise to power -- of fomenting "destruction" inside and outside of the region.

He added that unidentified foes had encouraged militant violence and used political reform talks to buy time, something he said would eventually transfer "the Libyan example to Yemen ... This has become more apparent and clear than ever."

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi, Noah Browning, Mohammed Ghobari, Angus McDowall and Sam Wilkin; Writing by William Maclean,; Editing by Louise Heavens and Stephen Powell)

Seven killed in clashes between Yemen's army and tribesmen: local officials

GNN - Clashes between the Yemeni army and tribesmen in Marib province left seven dead and more than 15 injured late on Thursday, tribal sources said.

The sources told Reuters that tribesmen in the region had intercepted a brigade from the army that was traveling from the southern province of Shabwa towards the country's capital, Sanaa.

The tribesmen believed the troops were being led by followers of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who they believe supports the Shiitee Houthis and planned to arm the group in their region, the tribal sources said.

The violent clashes between the two sides led to the death of five soldiers and two tribesmen and injured another 15 soldiers and tens of tribesmen, the sources said.

Westerns diplomats and Yemeni officials also say the Houthis are getting support from Saleh, who came under U.N. Security Council sanctions last year for threatening Yemen's peace and stability, something he denies.

The Marib tribesmen managed to seize the equipment and weapons belonging to the troops, a tribal source said. Tensions are easing now, the source said, after talks between the government and the tribesmen, who agreed to hand over the weapons they had seized to the ministry of defense.

No one from the Yemeni government was immediately available to comment.

Yemen's main petroleum export route is in Marib, an eastern province where oil flows at a rate of around 70,000 barrels per day.

Western powers are worried about the volatile situation in Yemen, which is fighting both al Qaeda militants and separatist rebels. The country shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter.

(GNN, AIP, Reuters)(Reporting by Mohamed Mokhashaf; Editing by Larry King)

Yemeni colonel shot dead in Aden, two hurt in bomb attack

(GNN) - Unidentified gunmen shot dead an army colonel in his car in Yemen's southern port city of Aden late on Friday and two soldiers were injured when a car bomb exploded in another major southern port on Saturday, security sources said.

The attacks follow dozens of others directed at security targets in the U.S. ally in recent months, killing hundreds. The army is conducting a big operation against Islamist militants in the southern provinces of Shabwa and Abyan.

On Saturday the army seized control of a militant bastion in

the southern area of al-Mahfad, a stronghold for the Islamists, killing four of its defenders and injuring a number of others, a military source was quoted as saying on the state news agency.

Western countries fear further destabilization in Yemen could give more space to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the local branch of the global Islamist militant movement, to plot attacks on international targets.

AQAP and its local ally, Ansar al-Sharia, have been waging an insurgency in southern Yemen for more than three years, battling both government forces and local tribal militias.

Colonel Sanad Badr was shot dead in his car by unknown assailants on a major Aden street late on Friday, a local official said.

Early on Saturday, a car bomb exploded outside an intelligence building in Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout province in the southeast. Two soldiers and at least one passer-by were injured in the blast, a security source said.

Government forces, backed by air force jets and allied militias, have been fighting Islamists in a new offensive in the south since Tuesday.

On Saturday Yemen's state news agency reported that one of those killed in an early stage of the offensive was Abu Islam al-Shaishani, a Chechen fighter with a senior role in AQAP.

(This story is refiled to correct name of Yemeni area, comment by military source) (Reuters) (GNN INT)

(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Stephen Powell)