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Yemen president evacuated as airstrikes target palace

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Unidentified warplanes attack residence in southern city of Aden, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee.

Anadolu/Mohammed Hamoud.

Anadolu/Mohammed Hamoud.

by Al Jazeera

Yemen’s president has been forced to flee his presidential palace after two fighter planes targeted his residence in Aden, a government official has said.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was evacuated on Thursday after the planes opened fire, hitting his residence in the southern city.

“President Hadi has been evacuated to a safe place but he has not left the country,” Hadi’s aide told the AFP news agency as a plane made a second pass over the palace.

The aircraft dropped a bomb or fired a missile at the compound in al-Maasheeq district of the southern port city, where Hadi is based, the official said, in a sharp escalation of Yemen’s months-long armed turmoil.

Residents said anti-aircraft guns opened fire at the planes, and smoke was seen rising from the area, but it was not immediately clear if Hadi was in the compound.

A Yemeni security source said the situation at the presidential palace “was under control and there was nothing to be worried about”.

Airport clashes

The attack on Hadi’s compound came after forces loyal to Yemen’s former president forced the closure of Aden’s international airport after clashes left at least four people dead and 13 wounded, security sources said.

A special forces unit, led by renegade General Abdel Hafez al-Saqqaf, stormed the airport grounds on Thursday before being repelled by fighters linked to the current president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

A military source told the AFP news agency that “Saqqaf’s troops were forced to retreat to their camp [north of the airport] after being subjected to heavy shelling.”

During the hours-long fighting, more than a 100 passengers who had boarded a Yemenia aircraft flight to Cairo, were ordered off a plane as machinegun fire rang out and explosions shook the terminal building.

At least two shells hit the airport’s grounds, security and aviation officials at the scene said, with at least four people killed and 13 wounded. Another 10 others were captured.

Sporadic clashes also erupted throughout Aden. Sounds of explosions periodically shook the city, and streets were largely deserted as residents hid in homes.

Meanwhile, a fighter jet attempting to target Hadi’s palace in Aden hit a nearby hill instead, leading to smoke billowing in to the sky.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from the Yemeni capital Sanaa, Hakim Al Masmari, editor in chief of the Yemen Post, said the forces who lanched the assault were still in Aden and were expected to continue attacks against Hadi.

Tensions have been building in Aden for days. Hadi loyalists dominate the city, but two army units are loyal to Saqqaf, a pro-Saleh commander, who leads a force of 3,000 special forces police.

Hadi unsuccessfully tried to remove al-Saqqaf from his post earlier this month, prompting some clashes.

Hadi insists he remains the country’s legitimate leader and enjoys much support in Aden, where he has been based since fleeing house arrest in Sanaa last month.

Yemen: Houthi rebels announce takeover of country

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Houthis issue “constitutional declaration” amid continuing unrest

Houthi rebels announced they were assuming country of Yemen on Friday. (Image: Google maps)

Houthi rebels announced they were assuming country of Yemen on Friday. (Image: Google maps)

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

Unrest continues in Yemen on Friday as Shiite Houthi rebels announced a “constitutional declaration” and that they were assuming control of the country.

The group issued the statement in a televised address from the Sunni majority country’s capital of Sana’a.

A 551-member Transitional National Council would be formed to replace the parliament, and that body would appoint a 5-member council to assume the presidential role during a “transitional period,” according to their statement.

President Abed Mansour Hadi, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, and members of the Yemeni cabinet resigned last month after the rebels had reportedly seized the presidential palace.

The Houthis’ announcement follows a Wednesday deadline set by the rebels for political parties to “to reach a solution and fill the vacuum.”

That power vacuum, however, did not appear to prevent U.S. drone strikeson the impoverished country.

From the New York Times:

“The revolutionary movement has always been quick, it won’t take that long,” said Ali al-Imad, a member of the Houthi political bureau. “It’s not important when, so much as it is that we now have a political road map.”

Independent journalist Iona Craig, who was based in Yemen or four years until December, tweeted Friday that the Houthi’s action was essentially formalizing a coup:

The Houthis have been described in media reports as being backed by Iran, but Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, dismisses this claim. As Inter Press Service reported last month:

On the one side, [Prashad] said, the government of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and then Hadi, suggested to the U.S. [the Houthis] were anti al-Qaeda.

But, on the other hand, they used the fact of al-Qaeda to go after their adversaries, including the Zaydis (Houthis).

“This double game was well known to the Americans. They went along with it. It is what allowed AQAP to take Jar and other regions of Yemen and hold them with some ease,” Prashad said.

He dismissed as “ridiculous” the allegation the Zaydis are “proxies of Iran”. He said they are a tribal confederacy that has faced the edge of the Saleh-Hadi sword.

Journalist and co-founder of the The Intercept Jeremy Scahill has stated that U.S.-backed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh “is sort of the not-so-hidden hand behind some of the power grab efforts of the Houthis.”

Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis continues to grip the lives of many Yemenis.

Anti-poverty organization Oxfam warned last month that over half the population was in need of aid, and that millions of Yemenis did not have enough to eat or have clean drinking water or basic healthcare services.

“It is simply unacceptable that the real story of 16 million Yemenis in need of help keeps going unnoticed,” Grace Ommer, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen said. “Despite the challenges, we continue to deliver desperately needed aid to Yemenis in some of the poorest areas outside the capital. But if the international community continues to stand by and watch while Yemen risks going from a fragile to a failed state we will find it even harder to maintain this lifesaving support.”

Houthis take over Yemen presidential palace

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UN discusses power struggle as Shia fighters, overcoming resistance from president’s loyalists, tighten grip on Sanaa.

Houthi fighters ride in a truck outside a Presidential Guards barracks they took over on a mountain overlooking the Presidential Palace in Sanaa Jan. 20, 2015. (Reuters)

Houthi fighters ride in a truck outside a Presidential Guards barracks they took over on a mountain overlooking the Presidential Palace in Sanaa Jan. 20, 2015. (Reuters)

by Al Jazeera

Houthi fighters have taken full control of Yemen’s presidential palace in the capital Sanaa after a brief clash with the compound’s security guards, witnesses and security sources say.

The development came a day after the parties in the ongoing conflict in the Arabian Peninsula country said at two separate times they had agreed to a ceasefire.

The ceasefires were intended to pave the way for negotiations on Tuesday between the opposing parties: the internationally backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and Ansarallah, the military wing of the Houthi movement.

Guards at the presidential palace housing the main office of Hadi said they handed over the compound to Houthi fighters after a brief clash on Tuesday.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, for years the chief negotiator for Ansarallah, later delivered a speech, reeling off a long list of grievances against the Hadi government.

He is the scion of the Zaidi Shia Houthi family from northwestern Yemen that the movement was named after.

He held Hadi responsible for the instability in Yemen and for failing to implement a peace deal reached in September, the Peace and National Partnership Agreement (PNPA).

“Had the president acted responsibly, … we the Yemeni people … would have witnessed a positive reality,” Houthi said.

The Yemeni government has previously blamed the Houthis for first reneging on the peace deal.

Khaled al-Hammadi, Al Jazeera’s producer in Sanaa, said Houthi fighters had “taken over and controlled completely the presidential palace”.

The commander of the presidential guard forces surrendered “the Third Brigade of presidential guards to Houthi fighters without resistance and left the presidential palace”, he said.

This brigade, he said, boasts at least 280 Russian late-model tanks.

Sniper attack

Separately, Al Jazeera’s Omar Al Saleh, reporting from the southern city of Aden, said he had received reports that presidential guards outside Hadi’s residence elsewhere in Sanaa had also come under attack from snipers.

He reported, quoting sources, that Hadi was safe but his residence was surrounded by Houthi fighters. It also appeared that Hadi was no longer in control and had run out of options, he said.

The UN Security Council also held closed-door consultations on Tuesday on the worsening crisis in Yemen.

Jamal Benomar, the UN special envoy to Yemen, enroute to Yemen reported to the Security Council on the latest developments.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said that the UN security council had tried almost all options at its disposal in Yemen, apart from military intervention, which member states were overwhelmingly against.

Mark Lyall Grant, the British ambassador to the UN told Al Jazeera that the goal of the meeting was to release a statement affirming support for Hadi, and “making it clear that the international community will not tolerate the spoilers of the transitional government”.

The council later released a statement condemning the violence and expressing concern over the “worsening political and security crisis”.

It recognised President Hadi as the “legitimate authority” and called for a return to a full implementation of the PNPA agreement. The council also called for “all parties to rapidly engage in finalising the constitution in a constructive manner”.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, called for an immediate halt to the fighting.

He implored all sides to “exercise maximum restraint and take the necessary steps to restore full authority to the legitimate government institutions”, a UN spokesperson said.

Ferea al-Muslimi, a Sanaa-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera Hadi had been slow to implement reforms since coming to power, and now he was completely “paralysed”.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, who has reported extensively from the country, said that the Houthis appeared to be giving Hadi a final opportunity to come to a political settlement.

Yemen has been wracked by unrest for months. The Houthi fighters seized large parts of Sanaa in September and repeatedly clashed with troops loyal to Hadi, culminating in Tuesday’s takeover of the presidential palace.

Siege of palace

Earlier on Tuesday, Nadia Sakkaf, Yemen’s information minister, described on Twitter the assault on the presidential palace despite negotiations between the government and the Houthis.

Witnesses in Sanaa cited by Reuters news agency said there was a brief clash between a Houthi unit and palace guards.

Witnesses also said they saw the Houthis seize armoured vehicles that had been guarding the entrances to the palace.

Al Jazeera’s Al Saleh said Ali Abdullah Saleh, the long-serving president toppled after mass protests in 2012, still commands a lot of influence in Yemen.

Ex-president Saleh wields clout in the military and among different tribes, he has cobbled together an alliance with the well-organised and well-armed Houthis – said to be backed by Iran – to strike at their common enemies, he said.

It has since been confirmed that only the presidential guard loyal to Hadi had fought against the Houthis in this latest round of fighting while the military and other forces stayed put.

Tuesday’s developments came a day after some of the fiercest fighting in Sanaa in recent years, with the Houthis engaging in artillery battles with the army near the presidential palace and surrounding the prime minister’s residence.

Nine people were killed and another 90 wounded before a shaky ceasefire came into force on Monday evening.

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