Gulf-trained Yemeni fighters boost ground forces

Mukalla: Yemeni fighters, who are believed to have received training and weapons in the Gulf, entered combat around the southern city of Aden on Sunday, joining with pro-government fighterswho are battling Al Houthi militiamen, according to local fighters in Aden.

The new troops arrived by sea in the last few days, they said. They all appeared to be Yemenis from the south who had trained in Saudi Arabia and possibly other Gulf states, according to a senior local commander, a fighter and an allied resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss troop actions.

Their claims could not be independently verified. If confirmed, the influx would represent one of the first major deployments of ground troops trained by the Saudi-led coalition, and would shift the make-up of a military operation that has largely relied on air strikes through its first weeks.

The reinforcements, who the commander said had been given equipment including anti-tank weapons, are entering a fight in Aden that has become a deadly stalemate. Hundreds of people have been killed and whole neighbourhoods destroyed in fighting over the last few weeks between the local militias, on one side, and the Al Houthis and their allied security forces on the other.

A Reuters report last week quoted a Yemeni official as saying that hundreds of tribal fighters had been trained by the Saudis to fight the Al Houthis in the central Marib province. And local militias fighting Al Houthis in Aden and Taiz say they have received weapons shipments from the Saudi-led coalition.

Earlier Sunday, Brigadier Geneneral Ahmad Al Asiri, the main spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, denied several media reports that foreign troops had landed in Aden.

After pictures appeared on Sunday on a local news website showing fighters wearing what looked like new, matching combat gear, Ali Al Ahmadi, a spokesman for local forces in Aden known as the Popular Resistance, said that a group of fighters had been specially selected and trained by local commanders, and then outfitted with equipment provided by Saudi Arabia.

But the senior commander and another fighter said that in fact, the new force had been trained abroad, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf. The force was made up of younger recruits, they said, as well as older military officers who had served in the army of South Yemen when it was an independent state.

The commander said that the older officers, who fled into exile after a brief civil war in 1994, had returned to Yemen “because they love the south”.

He said the troops that had arrived were part of a large contingent and that hundreds more soldiers were still being trained in Saudi Arabia.