Aden: Yemeni ministers have arrived back in Aden from Saudi exile after the government announced the “liberation” of the country’s second city from Iran-backed rebels, the interior minister said yesterday.
It is the first time members of the internationally recognised government have returned to homeland since the Houthi Shia rebels entered the southern port city in March, forcing President Abdrabhu Mansur Hadi and his ministers to flee their last refuge.
“We arrived last night,” Abdo Al Huzeifi said, adding he was accompanied by Transport Minister Badr Basalma and security officials.
He did not say how the delegation reached Aden, but Saudi-owned daily Asharq Al Awsat quoted a Saudi security official as saying they had flown from Riyadh to Eritrea and then travelled by boat.
Al Huzeifi said the rebels had been pushed out of the city, except for “few besieged groups refusing to surrender”.
In a decree, Hadi in Riyadh named Aden’s main thoroughfare after the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia as a gesture of gratitude.
He also issued a decree appointing Brigadier General Abdulrahim Ahmed Salem Atiq as Commander of the Second Military Region in the city of Mukalla, capital of Hadramout governorate in southeastern Yemen, promoting him to the rank of Major General.
The Riyadh-based government had announced that its loyalists had freed the city after four months of fighting with rebels and renegade troops loyal to Hadi’s ousted predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh. “The government announces the liberation of the province of Aden,” Vice-President Khaled Bahah said on Facebook.
A spokesman for the rebel forces dismissed the boast as “psychological warfare and an attempt to improve the crushed morale” of loyalist fighters. “The advance they are boasting about does not exceed a few kilometres here and there over front lines where they incurred heavy losses,” the spokesman said in a statement carried by the rebel-controlled news agency. Witnesses said the rebels remained in control of the city’s Al Tawahi district and that heavy fighting was continuing there. Agencies
