Saudi-led coalition launches strike after Aden 'coup'

A Saudi-led coalition said Sunday it launched a strike apparently against southern separatists in Yemen after they seized the presidential palace in the second city Aden.

The seizure, decried by the Riyadh-backed Yemeni government as a UAE-supported coup, reflects deep divisions between secessionists and loyalist forces, both of whom have fought Shiite Huthi rebels.

"The coalition targeted an area that poses a direct threat to one of the important sites of the legitimate government," a coalition statement said, calling on the separatist Southern Transitional Council to withdraw from positions seized in Aden or face further attacks.

Riyadh-based Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi is backed by the coalition -- led by Saudi Arabia and its ally the United Arab Emirates -- that is battling the Huthis who hail from Yemen's north.

But another force in the anti-Huthi coalition -- the UAE-trained Security Belt Force -- has since Wednesday been battling loyalists in Aden, the temporary base of Hadi's government.

The Security Belt Force is dominated by fighters who back the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which seeks to restore south Yemen as an independent state as it was from 1967-1990.

A Security Belt official told AFP Saturday the force had seized the presidential palace -- largely symbolic, due to Hadi's absence -- without a fight.

"Two hundred soldiers from the Presidential Guard were given safe passage out of the palace," the official said.

A witness confirmed the complex had been handed over.

The coalition called for an "immediate ceasefire", a spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency, and demanded an "urgent meeting" between the warring parties.

Both the Yemeni government and separatists said early Sunday they backed Riyad's call for dialogue and a suspension of fighting in Aden.

The government "affirms its commitment to respect the call of the Saudi-led coalition to ceasefire", a statement said, as the STC expressed its "full commitment to ceasefire".

Yemen's government earlier blamed the STC and the UAE for staging a "coup" against it.

The foreign ministry demanding "the UAE halt its material support and withdraw its military support, immediately and fully, from the groups that have rebelled against the state".

The STC's spokesman said Saturday the situation was "stable" and that the council was working to restore the water network, damaged in the fighting.

But the International Crisis Group think tank warned that the latest clashes "threaten to tip southern Yemen into a civil war within a civil war."