Aden: The United States said it had evacuated all its staff from Yemen, whose embattled president has appealed for “urgent intervention” by the UN Security Council as attacks by Iran-backed rebels bring his country nearer to civil war.

“Due to the deteriorating security situation in Yemen, the US government has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen,” State Department spokesperson Jeff Rathke said in a statement.

The evacuation comes after several suicide bombings claimed by the Daesh group killed 142 people in Sana’a on Friday, with the militants seeking to exploit the chaos gripping the country.

The impoverished nation is torn between a north controlled by Iran-backed Al Houthi rebels and a south dominated by allies of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled house arrest in Sana’a to Aden in February.

The UN Security Council was due to hold an emergency meeting on Sunday following Hadi’s appeal.

In his letter to the Council, Hadi denounced “the criminal acts of the Houthi militias and their allies,” saying they “not only threaten peace in Yemen but the regional and international peace and security.”

“I urge for your urgent intervention in all available means to stop this aggression that is aimed at undermining the legitimate authority, the fragmentation of Yemen and its peace and stability,” Hadi wrote.

Yemen has been torn by unrest since ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in early 2012 after a year-long popular uprising against him, with powerful armed groups sidelining the government since.

The country is now on the brink of civil war, with a deepening political impasse and an increasingly explicit territorial division along sectarian lines, with rising violence between the Al Houthi and Sunni tribes and Al Qaida.

Washington late on Friday pulled out troops from the Al Anad airbase in southern Yemen amid fighting involving Al Qaida militants nearby, which left at least 29 dead.

The US would “continue to actively monitor terrorist threats emanating from Yemen and have capabilities postured in the area to address them,” Rathke said.

Yemen has acknowledged that US personnel gathering intelligence for drone strikes on Al Qaida are deployed at Al Anad.

Hadi pledged on Saturday to fight Iranian influence in his country, accusing the Al Houthis of importing Tehran’s ideology.

In his first televised speech since he fled to Aden from house arrest in Sana’a, Hadi said he would ensure that “the Yemeni republic flag will fly on the Marran mountain in [the Al Houthi militia’s northern stronghold] Saada, instead of the Iranian flag.”

“The Iranian Twelver pattern that has been agreed upon between the Houthis and those who support them will not be accepted by Yemenis, whether Zaidi or Shafite,” he said.

In a letter to relatives of the victims of the mosque bombings, Hadi condemned the attacks as “terrorist, criminal and cowardly”.

“Such heinous attacks could only be done by the enemies of life,” who want to drag Yemen into “chaos, violence and internal fighting”, he said.

Since taking Sana’a, Al Houthis have tightened their grip on government institutions, aided by loyalists of Saleh.

But in their push to widen their control to the south, they have faced fierce resistance from tribes allied with Al Qaida.

Mohammad Abdul Salam, spokesperson for the Al Houthis’ Ansarullah party, called the attacks on the mosques part of a “clear war against the Yemeni people and its popular revolution” — a reference to Sana’a’s takeover.

“It is now imperative that we complete the revolutionary steps to protect the people and their revolution,” he said in a statement.