Yemen president reportedly flees home amid rebels’ advances

Posted 2015-03-25 11:10 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

Yemen’s embattled president has reportedly fled his home in Aden Wednesday to an undisclosed location at Shiite rebels near his last refuge

Officials told The Associated Press about the president hours after the television station owned by the revels reported they seized an air base where U.S. troops and Europeans advised the country in its fight against Al Qaeda.

The air base is just 60 miles outside Aden. The port city is where President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi established a temporary capital.

Witnesses told the Associated Press they saw a convoy of presidential vehicles Wednesday leaving Hadi’s palace, located at the top of a hill in Aden overlooking the Arabian Sea.

U.S. and European advisers fled the air base days ago after Al Qaeda fighters seized a nearby city.

The advance of the Houthi fighters is threatening to plunge one of the Arab world’s poorest country into a civil war that could draw other Gulf neighbors into it. Hadi has asked for Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Commerce for intervention as well as the United Nationals to authorize a foreign military intervention in the country.

Early Wednesday, Al-Masirah news channel reported that the Houthis and allied fighters “secured” the al-Annad air base. It claims the base had been looted by Al Qaeda fighters and troops loyal to Hadi.

The reported takeover took place after hours long clashing between rival forces around the base. The U.S. had evacuated some 100 soldiers, including Special Forces commandos, from the base after Al Qaeda had briefly taken over a nearby city.

The base was crucial to the U.S. drone campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is considered to be the most dangerous branch of the terror organization. American and European military advisers there also offered logistical in its fight against the group, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

U.S. operations against the militants have scaled back due to the chaos in Yemen. U.S. officials have said CIA drone strikes will continue in the country, though there will be fewer of them.

The take over of the base is part of a large offensive by the Houthis backed by loyalists of the deposded president Ali Abdullah Saleh within Yemen’s armed forces.

The Houthis, in the aftermath of suicide bombings in Sanaa last week that killed at least 137 people, ordered a general mobilization of its forces. The group’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, vowed to send his forces to the south under the context of fighting Al Qaeda and militant groups.

The Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in September and have been advancing south alongside forces loyal to Saleh.

On Tuesday, Houthi militias and allied forces fired bullets and tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters in the city of Taiz, known as the gateway to southern Yemen. The Houthis killed six demonstrators and wounded scores more, authorities said.

The Houthis also battled militias loyal to Hadi in the city of al-Dhalea adjacent to Taiz, which is Yemen’s third-largest city. The city also is the birthplace of its 2011 Arab Spring-inspired uprising that forced Saleh to hand over power to Hadi in a deal brokered by the U.N. and Gulf countries.

Hadi on Tuesday asked the U.N. Security Council to authorize a military intervention “to protect Yemen and to deter the Houthi aggression expected to occur at any hour from now” against Aden and the rest of the south. In a letter to the council’s president, Hadi said he also has asked members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League for immediate help.

Saudi Arabia warned that “if the Houthi coup does not end peacefully, we will take the necessary measures for this crisis to protect the region.”

Diplomatic missions of Hadi’s Arab Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, have evacuated their diplomatic staff from Aden over the past few days, officials said. They earlier evacuated from Sanaa and relocated to Aden to support Hadi.

The Associated Press contributed to this report