Aden street named after fallen Emirati soldier

Some Yemeni government ministers have returned to the country's second city after rebel forces retreated.

Military vehicles of the Southern Resistance fighters move during clashes with Houthi fighters on a street in Yemen's southern port city of Aden on July 17. Reuters

ADEN // President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi on Saturday named a street in Aden after Emirati first lieutenant Abdul Aziz Sarhan Saleh Al Ka’abi, who died last week while taking part in the military operation to restore his government to power.

Mr Hadi also honoured Saudi King Salman, whose country is leading the multinational coalition battling the Houthi rebels and renegade factions of the military, by naming the main street in the recently liberated port city after him.

Mr Hadi’s interior minister, Abdo Al Huzeifi, and transport minister Badr Basalma returned to Aden after pro-Hadi forces took control of most of the city on Friday.

“We arrived last night,” Mr Al Huzeifi said on Saturday, adding that they were accompanied by several security officials.

It is the first time members of the internationally recognised government have returned to their homeland since the Iran-backed rebels entered Aden in March, forcing Mr Hadi and his ministers to flee their last refuge.

Mr Al Huzeifi did not say how he reached Aden, but the Saudi-owned daily Asharq Al Awsat quoted a Saudi security official as saying the delegation flew from Riyadh to Eritrea and then travelled on by boat.

The minister said the rebels had been pushed out of the city, except for “few besieged groups that are refusing to surrender”.

Mr Hadi’s Riyadh-based government said on Friday that its loyalists had freed the city after four months of ferocious fighting with rebels and renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Witnesses said the rebels remained in control of Al Tawahi district on Saturday and that heavy fighting was continuing there.

Southern militiamen of the Popular Resistance launched Operation Golden Arrow against the rebels in Aden on Tuesday. Officials in the anti-Houthi forces say the offensive was planned for weeks and benefited from training and arms deliveries from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Saudi-led coalition on Saturday continued the air campaign it launched in March after the fall of Aden. Coalition aircraft bombed a rebel reinforcement convoy east of Aden at dawn, killing 25 fighters, a military official said.

Popular Resistance fighters also went on the offensive elsewhere in the south.

They captured 47 rebel fighters, including officers of the Republican Guard who have remained loyal to Mr Saleh, in an assault on the rebel-held Al Anad air base north of Aden – Yemen’s largest. The attack was supported by Saudi-led airstrikes, militia spokesman Qaed Nasser said.

Further east, in Shabwa province, the loyalists recaptured the town of Bayhan, he said.

Also in Shabwa, local fighters and army forces backed by airstrikes wrested control of the headquarters of the 117th armoured division, and the Labuza army base in Lahj province, north of Aden, residents and officials said.

Aden was Mr Hadi’s last refuge after he fled the capital Sanaa earlier this year as the rebels took over the government and launched an offensive in which they seized much of the country.

Large area of the city have been reduced to rubble by the four months of ferocious fighting.

The United Nations has declared Yemen a level-3 humanitarian emergency, the highest on its scale.

After weeks of shuttle diplomacy between the two sides, it announced a humanitarian truce last weekend to allow the delivery of desperately needed relief supplies, but the ceasefire failed to take hold.

More than 80 per cent of Yemen’s population – 21 million people – are in need of aid, with 13 million facing food shortages.

More than 3,200 people have been killed in the fighting – many of them civilians, the UN says.

* Agence France-Presse with additional reporting from Wam and Reuters