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Yemen's Houthi militia close in on president's Aden base

25 March 2015 20:20 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Houthi militia forces in Yemen backed by allied army units seized an air base on Wednesday and appeared close to capturing the southern port of Aden from defenders loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, residents saids, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The United States 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 armor, advanced to within 20 km (12 miles) 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 neighborhood 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 canceled for security reasons, guards at the facility told Reuters.

Yemen's slide toward civil war has made the country a crucial front in mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia's rivalry with Shi'ite Iran, which Riyadh accuses of stirring up sectarian strife through its support for the Houthis.

Sunni Arab monarchies around Yemen have condemned the Shi'ite Houthi takeover as a coup and have mooted a military intervention in favor of Hadi in recent days.

U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia is moving heavy military equipment including artillery to areas near its border with Yemen, raising the risk that the Middle East’s top oil power will be drawn into the worsening Yemeni conflict.

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.