Dubai: Weeks after seizing Yemen’s southern port, Aden, members of a Saudi-led military coalition and the local fighters it supports say they are poised to oust Iranian-allied Al Houthi forces from the capital Sana’a.

Attention has increasingly turned to Marib, a dry tribal region across the arid hills east of Sana’a, where Saudi-linked media and local sources report a build-up of coalition-backed forces preparing for a concerted thrust towards Yemen’s capital.

Marib is the most obvious launchpad for a new coalition military push, where local tribes have for months fought back-and-forth battles against Al Houthis and Saleh’s forces, and beyond which lies a clear, safe supply route to Saudi Arabia.

Leaders of the exiled government’s army have been quoted in Saudi press saying they are building up forces in the province and are ready for a push on Sana’a next month.

A local official said 130 armoured vehicles, 1,000 Yemeni troops trained in Saudi Arabia and military experts from the kingdom and the UAE had arrived in recent days along with engineers to allow its airstrip to import materiel.

Questions have arisen about who will rule Yemen, which regional power will hold sway and whether its persistent Islamist militant threat can be ended, as well as its future as a single state after centuries of tribal disputes and regional divisions.

Saudi Arabia and its allies want to maintain the state created in 1990 by the merger of the old north and south Yemen, say informed diplomats, but the possibility of division appears to be growing.

In the north, the Al Houthis have pounded the Saudi border, determined to ensure coalition victories and continued airstrikes come at a cost. In southern Taiz, fierce fighting, and the bombardment of civilians, continues.

The dozens of Emirati troops guarding Aden’s smashed-up airport and their helicopters, tanks and armoured cars lined up on the apron during a recent visit to the city were ample evidence of the ground role played by Gulf states.

It was the direct involvement of Emirati ground forces, alongside Yemeni troops trained in Saudi Arabia and equipped with sophisticated heavy weapons that allowed the coalition to break months of stalemate to take Aden, informed diplomats say.

The Arab states say Al Houthis are a proxy for Iran, an accusation the movement denies, countering that its advance is a revolution against Western-backed officials it says are corrupt, as well as Al Qaida militants. It has joined up with military allies of Yemen’s longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted by Arab Spring unrest in 2012.

A renewed barrage of attacks on Saudi border positions, including the reported launch of a Scud missile at the kingdom on Tuesday, showed the Al Houthis and Saleh are determined to make Gulf involvement in the conflict hurt.

On Friday a Saudi Apache helicopter came down on the border, killing both pilots, while on Monday Al Houthi shells killed Major General Abdul Rahman Al Shahrani, commander of the 18th Brigade, and the kingdom’s highest ranking casualty of the conflict.

While the Emirati soldiers did sentry duty by Aden’s runway or rested in an upstairs terminal lounge, outside the front entrance stood slight young men with assault rifles slung over their shoulders and curling hair falling across bearded faces.

Many of these un-uniformed fighters, wearing flip-flops and Yemeni futeh sarongs, took up arms when the Al Houthis reached their city, abandoning daily life as their neighbourhoods were engulfed by street fighting.

But in Yemen’s multi-sided conflict, it was never clear how many of these fighters had loyalties beyond those to their immediate neighbourhood, whether to Hadi, to a southern separatist movement or to other political or militant groups.

While coalition forces protect key facilities in Aden, basic security in many areas of the city has collapsed, as a YouTube video showing the mob execution of a suspected Al Houthi collaborator demonstrated.

— With inputs from Reuters