Sana’a: Yemeni security officials said Al Houthi rebels and their allies captured the presidential palace in Aden following heavy clashes in the commercial center of this southern coastal city on Thursday.
The capture came despite week-long airstrikes in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition trying to halt the advance of the rebels.
Aden’s Maasheeq palace is a cluster of colonial-era villas perched atop a rocky hill that juts into the Arabian Sea. The palace was President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s last seat of power before he fled to Saudi Arabia last month amid Al Houthi advance.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
The rebels made advances in Aden just hours after they were forced into a retreat by airstrikes from a Saudi-led coalition, local residents said.
“Al Houthi snipers are deployed on tops of buildings in Khor Maksr where they target anybody moving around in the area,” a resident told said by phone. “Dozens have been killed and wounded.”
There were no immediate comment from Al Houthis.
Mwanwhile, Saudi Arabia said Thursday a soldier was shot dead and 10 more wounded by gunfire from across the Yemeni border, its first casualties since beginning a operation against Shiite rebels a week ago.
The Border Guards at a post in the kingdom’s southwestern Asir region came “under fire from a mountainous interior zone,” the interior ministry said in a statement on the official Saudi Press Agency.
The rebels, who already control the capital, Sana’a, have intensified their attacks during the past days as they move to capture Aden, the stronghold of embattled Hadi.
Fierce fighting was under way between Al Houthis and pro-Hadi loyalists in several parts of Aden.
Should the Red Sea city fall to the rebels, it would deal a major blow to the Saudi-led coalition, which launched an aerial campaign on March 26 against Al Houthis in response to a call for intervention from Hadi.
A Saudi adviser on Thursday denied that special forces from the kingdom had landed in Yemen’s port city of Aden, saying they were troops linked to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The fighters who went ashore in Aden were “Yemeni special forces loyal to Saleh who landed by small boat” to secure a district of Aden, said the adviser who did not want to be identified.
“They are few in numbers and have made their way to the old parliament building,” the source said.
Witnesses separately said fighters and tanks of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels and allied army units loyal to Saleh had entered the presidential palace in Aden.
A Western diplomat in Riyadh said Thursday that Saudi Arabia is “not very keen to go on the ground” with troops.
An official at Aden harbour denied earleir reports that foreign troops had landed at the port.
He said that a Chinese warship arrived at the port to evacuate Arab and foreign nationals stranded there.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that the warship came under fire from an unknown source.
“This prompted the warship soldiers to deploy around the port to protect the persons who were heading to the vessel,” the official said without giving further details.
Hadi took refuge in Aden in February after fleeing Sana’a, where he had been besieged by the Houthis for more than a month.
Al Houthis, who hail from the north, have in recent months swept across much of Yemen with backing from troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Saudis and their partners in the Arab coalition have vowed to press ahead with the bombing campaign until Hadi is reinstated, raising the spectre of a wider conflict with Iran, which has condemned the intervention.
