Clashes in Aden Part of UAE Plot to Split Up Yemen: Ansarullah


TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior member of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement said recent clashes and infighting between enemy forces in the port city of Aden are part of the United Arab Emirates’ dangerous plot to break up the Arabian Peninsula country.

The recent position of the UAE in Aden reflects the real goal behind the country’s involvement in the war over the past five years, which is to divide Yemen into more than two parts and bring the country’s situation back to pre-1990, Hamid Razzaq told Tasnim.

“The UAE has trained about 90,000 militants in the form of Security Belt and elite forces,” the Houthi official said.

These forces are basically opposed to the leadership of fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and it reveals that they are seeking to divide southern Yemen and carry out “dangerous schemes” hatched by the UAE and some other foreign countries, he added.

“For this reason, we were not deceived by claims of restoring legitimacy to Yemen from the very beginning and opposed the scheme,” Razzaq went on to say.

 UAE-backed separatists known as the Southern Transitional Council reportedly seized the presidential palace and other important sites in Aden on Saturday, effectively wresting control of the port city from Saudi-backed forces.

The Saudis backing Mansour Hadi’s government hit back on Sunday, saying they attacked one target, after threatening to act if southern forces do not cease fighting.

Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the Saudi-led coalition for more than four years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies, including the UAE, have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to Hadi.

Official UN figures say that more than 15,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began.

The Saudi-led war has impacted over seven million children in Yemen who now face a serious threat of famine, according to UNICEF figures. Over 6,000 children have either been killed or sustained serious injuries since 2015, UN children’s agency said. The humanitarian situation in the country has also been exacerbated by outbreaks of cholera, polio, and measles.