EPAThe United Arab Emirates has said it will withdraw its remaining forces from Yemen after Saudi Arabia backed a call by Yemen’s Presidential Council to withdraw them within 24 hours.
The Emirati announcement followed an airstrike by a Saudi-led military coalition on an alleged arms shipment for UAE-backed separatist forces in the southern port of Mukalla.
The UAE denied the shipment contained weapons and expressed “deep regret” over the Saudi allegations.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been allies in the war against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement over the past decade, but infighting between the rival factions that support them has deepened the rift between them.
Saudi Arabia also accused the UAE of “pressuring” separatists to attack Saudi-backed government forces in two eastern provinces and warned it would take measures to counter such “highly dangerous” actions.
On Tuesday afternoon, the UAE Ministry of Defense issued a statement announcing “the dismissal of remaining counterterrorism personnel in Yemen at their own request,” six years after the UAE Armed Forces “concluded” their presence.
The ministry said the decision to withdraw them was made “in light of recent developments and their potential impact on the safety and effectiveness of counterterrorism missions,” without mentioning the coalition attack or Saudi Arabia’s warning.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry’s strongly worded statement on Tuesday morning said it was working to “contain the escalating steps” recently taken by the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is seeking independence for South Yemen.
She accused the UAE of “pressuring” the STC to carry out offensives in the eastern provinces of Hadramawt and al-Mahra, which she said posed “a threat to the national security of the Kingdom as well as the security and stability of the Republic of Yemen and the region.” It also warned that Saudi Arabia would take measures to counter such “highly dangerous” actions.
The UAE Foreign Ministry rejected allegations that it had “pressured or given instructions to any Yemeni party to conduct military operations that would endanger the security of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or target its borders.”
It also noted that since the start of the STC offensives, the UAE had “focused on containing the situation, supporting de-escalation efforts and promoting understanding to help maintain security and stability.”
The head of Yemen’s eight-member Presidential Council, which includes STC representatives, previously announced that he was terminating a joint defense pact with the United Arab Emirates and ordering its forces to withdraw within 24 hours “in the interest of ensuring the security of all citizens and reaffirming the commitment to Yemen’s unity, sovereignty, stability and territorial integrity.”
Rashad al-Alimi also declared a state of emergency for a period of 90 days, which he said was necessary to confront the Houthis and what he cited as an “internal conflict led by mutinous military elements taking orders from the United Arab Emirates.”
STC leaders said the UAE withdrawal ultimatum was unilateral and had no legal basis and insisted the UAE would remain a “major partner” in the fight against the Houthis.
AFPAlimi’s announcement came after the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition – which includes the United Arab Emirates – said it had carried out a “limited” airstrike in the southern Yemeni port of Mukalla targeting weapons and military vehicles for the STC forces, which arrived on two ships from the United Arab Emirates.
The deliveries constituted “an imminent threat and an escalation that threatens peace and stability,” said Major General Turki al-Maliki.
A port official told AFP that an evacuation warning was received at 04:00 local time (0100 GMT) and an open area of the facility was attacked about 15 minutes later.
Images showed a number of burned-out military vehicles and pickup trucks in a walled area at the port, as well as damage to a nearby building. No casualties were reported.
The UAE Foreign Ministry said it was surprised by the attack on Mukalla and that the coalition statement was made without consultation with member states.
It insisted that the shipment in question “contained no weapons and that the unloaded vehicles were not intended for a Yemeni party but were shipped for use by Emirati forces operating in Yemen.”
On Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition called on STC forces to “peacefully withdraw” from Hadramawt and al-Mahra, a day after the Saudi air force reportedly bombed separatist positions in the Wadi Nahab area of Hadramawt.
STC forces launched offensives in the two provinces earlier this month amid rising tensions, bringing them into direct conflict with government forces.
The operations are necessary to “restore stability” in the south and fight the Houthis and the jihadist groups Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS), it said.
Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that began in 2014 when the Houthis ousted the internationally recognized government from the capital Sanaa. The conflict escalated in 2015 after the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states intervened to restore government rule.
The fighting has reportedly killed more than 150,000 people and sparked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Early in the war, the STC and other separatists seeking independence for southern Yemen, which was a separate country before unification with the north in 1990, formed an uneasy alliance with the government to prevent the Houthis’ capture of the southern city of Aden.
In recent years, however, the STC and its allies have turned against the government and gradually taken control of Aden and large parts of the country’s south.
