A coalition of Arab states vowed to coordinate political and military efforts to restore order in Yemen as Saudi-led warplanes today launched new air strikes on Shiite Huthi rebels.
The raids killed at least 12 Huthi insurgents and allied forces as fighting continued across several provinces, military and local sources said.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and armed forces chief of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said the coalition is now working on military and political fronts to reestablish the legitimate authority in Sanaa.
The campaign's new phase is based on a "multilayered strategy, including military, as well as politics and development, to reestablish the legitimacy," he said on a visit to his troops in Saudi Arabia taking part in the coalition.
"We have no other choice but to succeed in the test of Yemen," Sheikh Mohammed said, quoted in UAE daily Al-Ittihad, ahead of another UN Security Council meeting Monday on efforts to halt the conflict.
He stressed the UAE's determination to act alongside other Arab countries to confront "regional agendas that reflect greed", an apparent reference to Gulf neighbour Iran which supports the rebels but denies having armed them.
On the other side of the Gulf, Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief said Monday that Saudi Arabia was verging on collapse as Tehran's position strengthened, comparing Riyadh to Israel because of its intervention in Yemen.
The remarks by General Mohammad Ali Jafari were a further sign of deteriorating relations between Tehran and Riyadh, after recent heavy criticism by Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.
"Today, treacherous Saudi Arabia is stepping in the footsteps of Israel and the Zionists," the official IRNA news agency quoted Jafari as saying.
"Today the Saudi dynasty is on the verge of decline and fall," he said, asserting that Iran was in the ascendancy.
In the latest air raids, five schools converted by the Huthis into military bases in Ataq, the capital of southern Abyan province, were hit, military sources said.
The raids killed at least 12 insurgents and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has allied himself with the northern rebels against the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, the sources said.
Also in Abyan, warplanes targeted rebel positions on the outskirts of Loder, the province's second largest city, witnesses said.
