Troops loyal to Yemen‘s internationally recognised government have captured Aden’s airport from southern separatist forces, according to a government official.
Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani said in a Twitter post on Wednesday that the national army had “taken control” of the airport.
In an earlier tweet, Al-Eryani said the troops had also begun to secure several districts throughout the port city, which was seized along with other parts of Yemen’s south by forces belonging to the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) earlier this month.
Urgent
National army forces enter Aden airport and take full control of the main gate of the airport amidst public celebration and joy
#Aden_wins pic.twitter.com/ozFBMahtuF— معمر الإرياني (@ERYANIM) August 28, 2019
Residents told Reuters news agency that government forces attacked Aden’s eastern suburbs on Wednesday, and fought artillery duels with the separatists, who are demanding self-rule in the south.
The reported developments came after government troops also wrestled control of Zinjibar, the capital of the neighbouring Abyan, from the STC earlier this week and secured most of the oil-producing province of Shabwa and its liquefied natural gas terminal in Balhaf.
Saudi-UAE rift
The separatists and the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi are nominally united under the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to try to restore his rule.
Hadi’s government was removed from power in the capital Sanaa by the Iranian-aligned Houthis in late 2014. His administration subsequently relocated to Aden.
However, the STC turned on the government in July after accusing a party allied to Hadi of being complicit in a Houthi attack on southern forces, prompting their move on Aden.
Alkhader Sulaiman, a spokesperson for the STC, told Al Jazeera that the developments are a “cheap, immoral tactic” by the internationall recognised government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi “to cause chaos in the city”.
“The legitimate government [of Hadi] has proven to be incompetent, dysfunctional and is corrupted from the highest ranking government official to the lowest official,” Sulaiman said, speaking from New York.
According to Sulaiman, Hadi’s government has “no intention of fighting the Houthis”.
“They have been in a stalemate ceasefire in Aden with over 250,000 troops for over four years and they have only used these forces to destabilise what has already been liberated by the southern forces in the southern governates,” he said.
The standoff has exposed a rift between Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which in June scaled down its presence in Yemen under a Western pressure to end the devastating war, but continues to support thousands of southern separatist forces.
Commenting on the latest development in Yemen, Houthi member Mohamad al-Bukahiti told Al Jazeera: “Saudi Arabia won over the UAE which means that the party that wants to destroy Yemen won over the one that wants to divide Yemen.”
“We call on Yemeni-Yemeni dialogue without outside intervention,” he added.
Saudi Arabia wants to resolve the standoff in the south to refocus the coalition on fighting the Houthis, who control Sanaa and most urban centres in the Arabian Peninsula nation.
But Hadi’s government said it would not participate until the separatists cede control of sites they have seized.
The crisis in the south has also complicated the United Nations’ efforts to implement peace deals elsewhere in the country and pave the way for negotiations to end a war that has killed tens of thousands and pushed Yemen to the brink of famine.
Yet al-Bukhaiti rejected the idea that a solution to the Yemen crisis must come through UN-sponsored negotiations, saying Hadi “has no power or authority”.
South Yemen was a separate state until it merged with the north in 1990. Four years later, an armed secession bid failed to reverse the reunification.
