Yemen’s ousted officials have requested a ground intervention to bolster a Saudi-led air offensive against the country’s Houthi rebels. Meanwhile, neighboring Iran has made calls for diplomacy, saying the military campaign is a “strategic mistake”.
Saudi
authorities say they have gathered troops along the border with Yemen in
preparation for any possible ground offensive, Reuters reported on Tuesday,
adding that no exact time to send the troops in has yet been stipulated.
Pakistan, which has previously supported Riyadh by deploying troops to Saudi
Arabia to provide extra regional security, also said that it is sending troops
to support Saudi Arabia in the context of the current Yemeni conflict, the
agency reported.
Despite airstrikes delivered
by Saudi air forces and their Gulf allies, the Houthis are continuing their
offensive against the dwindling loyalists of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Hadi was ousted by the rebels and fled to Saudi Arabia, requesting military
intervention from the Arab states.
The heaviest exchange of
cross-border fire since the start of air offensive was reported on Tuesday,
with Saudi troops clashing with Yemeni Houthi fighters. Hadi-allied officials
have remained hopeful that Riyadh would send ground troops to turn the tide for
the ousted official.
“We are asking for that [Saudi ground
operation in Yemen], and as soon as possible, in order to save our
infrastructure and save Yemenis under siege in many cities,” the
president’s Foreign Minister Riyadh Yasseen said an interview with al-Arabiya
Hadath TV channel.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir
Abdollahian labeled the Saudi strikes a “strategic mistake” and called for
a dialogue to help solve the crisis in Yemen. “Iran and Saudi Arabia can
cooperate to solve the Yemeni crisis,” the official said in Kuwait,
as cited by Reuters, adding that Iran “recommends all parties in Yemen return to calm
and dialogue.”
“This war is not about Yemen or the Houthis,
it's about what used to be a cold war between the Persians and the rest of the
Islamic world, especially the Arab Gulf. Today the cold war became a real one,”
political analyst Roula Taj told RT.
More casualties have been reported in the escalating conflict,
with overnight street clashes in Hadi’s stronghold Aden claiming at least 26
lives, Reuters reported, citing a health ministry official. Ten others died
during the Tuesday shelling of a residential building close to the residence
once used by the president, the agency reported referring to witnesses
accounts. In the central town of Yarim, an air strike hit a fuel tanker,
killing at least 10 people, residents said.
Coalition bombers targeted rebel positions near the airport of the
Yemeni capital of Sanaa, while fighters from the Houthi militia entered a
coastal military base overlooking the Red Sea's strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait
on Tuesday, local officials told Reuters. Heavy fighting between Hadi loyalists
and opponents was also reported in southern province of Dhalea.
On Monday, 45 people were killed and another 65 injured in an
airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition at a refugee camp in Houthi-controlled
northern Yemen, according to the International Organization for Migration
(IMO).
The airstrikes have also affected the Red Cross medical supplies
deliveries to the area, with the planes which are carrying the necessities
unable to fly to Yemen.
“In Yemen today we have a very serious
humanitarian situation. Hospitals are running at a low capacity... We need to
bring in urgent medical supplies to sustain our stocks,” spokesperson
at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for Near and Middle East
Sitara Jabeen told RT.
She added that the organization was expecting to bring
in a plane carrying medical supplies for up to 1,000 patients to Sanaa, “but so
far have not been able to get the permission we need to move this plane from
Jordan to Yemen.”
So far, the airstrikes have failed to change the military balance
in Yemen. While Houthis reportedly found an ally in Yemen's former President
Ali Abdullah Saleh, who resigned in 2012 amid mass public protests, some
Western officials have alleged that Iran financially supports the Houthis in an
effort to control Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
Voicing support for the Saudi bombing campaign, Turkish President
Tayyip Erdogan last week accused Iran of seeking regional dominance in the
Middle East. Tehran officials said Erdogan’s visit to Iran, which is scheduled
for next week, may now be scrapped. The warning came from Iranian MP Esmayeel
Kosari in his Sunday interview with the semi-official Fars news agency. Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Ankara to act responsibly in
the conflict.
Russia has also warned against reducing the complex
Yemeni conflict to a simplified stand-off narrative, whether national or sectarian
in nature. “We cannot allow it to degrade into a Sunni-Shiite confrontation.
Neither can we allow the situation to turn into an open conflict between the
Arabs and Iran. We will do everything to prevent it,” Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
The intensified fighting in the country provides a fertile ground
for extremism and terrorism, with Yemen having already having been an
operational base of Al-Qaeda militants for years. After the Yemeni and Saudi
branches of Al-Qaeda merged to form Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),
the group became one of the world’s biggest exporters of terrorism, with the US
considering it the most dangerous branch of Al-Qaeda.
AQAP claims to be behind January attack on Charlie Hebdo
journalists in Paris, with terrorists saying the main enemy of Islam is now
France rather than the United States. The latter has already scaled down its
operations against AQAP in the region, undermining an effort dating back to
2002.
The conflict in Yemen may also hamper the campaigns against the
terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, where US and its Arab allies
found themselves on the same side as Iran. Extremist groups affiliated with the
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) now operate in Yemen, with its militants
claiming responsibility for recent attacks on mosques in the country's capital
Sanaa, in which over 100 people have been killed and hundreds injured.
Source: RT
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