Arab Coalitions’ fighter jets target Huthi controlled by Houthi

Saudi warplanes hit checkpoint outside Sana'a, kill seven ... Residents said the strike, which targeted the security checkpoint in the Bani Matar District in Sana'aProvince. The checkpoint was being manned by Yemen's popular Houthi. Saudi-led war continues to wreak havoc on the poorest Arab nation.

The war of statements in Yemen between former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and head of Ansar Allah group, Abdul Malik al-Houthi exploded on Saturday into a military confrontation between their militants in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.

A source told Asharq Al-Awsat that “militants believed to be linked to Saleh’s Republican Guards fired at a Houthi military position in the Joulat al-Misbaha where the two groups exchanged fire in the presence of a high security deployment.”

Sky News Arabia later reported that one person from Saleh’s militants and five Houthi militants were killed and several others were injured during the clashes, which it said erupted after Houthi fighters tried to set up a security checkpoint near Saleh’s house in Sana’a.”

Sky news added that pro-Saleh forces spread later in Al Sabeen Square where nearby streets were closed due to the clashes.

A source in Sana’a told Asharq Al-Awsat that the two groups were trying to enforce mediation though the intermediary of leaders from both sides.

In the past weeks, tension grew between Saleh and Houthi, who had both joined forces in 2014 and drove the legitimate government out of the capital.

Separately, the Joint Forces Command of the Arab Coalition for the Restoration of Legitimacy in Yemen issued a statement on Saturday saying that targeting a house in Faj Atan in the Yemeni capital Sana’a at dawn last Friday was an unintentional incident, adding that the planned military objective was a legitimate military objective of a Command and Control Center, or Etisalat, which belongs to the Houthi armed militias, developed to take nearby residential areas and civilians as human shields.

“Documents and procedures relating to operational planning … and the presence of a technical mistake was the cause of accidental as well as unintentional incident proven not to be directly targeting the aforementioned house,” the statement said.

Spokesman of the coalition forces Col. Turki al-Maliki expressed deep sorrow over the occurrence of this unintentional and accidental incident, collateral damage to civilians and sincere sympathy to their relatives.

A Yemeni colonel loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and two Houthi rebels have been killed in Sanaa, in an unprecedented escalation of violence between the allies with Saleh’s party warning it could push the capital into all-out war.

An anti-government alliance between Saleh and rebel leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi has crumbled over the past week, with the two accusing each other of treason and back-stabbing.
Witnesses in Sanaa, which Saleh and Houthi jointly control, said the ex-president’s forces had spread in southern parts of the capital near the presidential offices, which Saleh still holds despite resigning in 2012. They said the forces had deployed in Sabaeen Square and the district of Hadda.
Saleh’s General People’s Congress party said in a statement on Sunday that “remaining silent on the incident would open the door to strife that would be difficult to contain.”

Col. Khaled Al-Rida, the deputy head of foreign relations in the GPC, was killed in the clashes between supporters of Saleh and Abdul Malik Al-Houthi late Saturday, the statement said.

A source within the GPC said the clashes erupted at a Houthi rebel checkpoint in Hadda after a dispute between fighters manning the checkpoint and armed supporters of Saleh who were driving by the rebel-run Saba news agency said two members of the Popular Committees, a tribal alliance largely dominated by the Houthis, were also killed.