(Bloomberg) -- Forces loyal to Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi fought southern separatist gunmen near the presidential palace in the port city of Aden on Wednesday, in a major flareup between supposed allies in the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi rebels.
The violence followed the burial of a southern leader killed in a Houthi missile attack last week, local media and witnesses said. The vice president of the separatist Southern Transitional Council, Hani Bin Buraik, called on southern resistance forces to mobilize and march on the palace to evict the government of Hadi, who lives in Riyadh.
The council is aided by the United Arab Emirates, which has been a key partner of Saudi Arabia in the war launched in 2015 to defeat the Iran-backed Houthis and reinstate Hadi's rule. The U.A.E., however, has signaled its pulling back its forces from Yemen against the backdrop of a U.S.-Iranian confrontation that has threatened to tip the Persian Gulf into a regional war.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mohammed Hatem in Dubai at mhatem1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Karl Maier
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