CAIRO: Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul-Gheit called on the international community on Tuesday to take immediate action in order to contain the dangerous developments in Yemen.
His spokesman Mahmoud Afifi quoted Aboul-Gheit as saying that the assassination of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday demonstrates the criminal nature of the Houthi militants.
Aboul-Gheit said Saleh’s death leaves Yemen, which is already exhausted by war, on the brink of further deterioration on the humanitarian level.
The Houthi militias have rejected all solutions that have been proposed to resolve the conflict that erupted in 2014, he said according to his spokesman. Their refusal to deal with any political efforts reveals that their devious plot is aimed at having the Yemeni people submit to their rule, he said, according to Asharq Al-Awsat.
This plan should be thwarted through all possible legitimate means, he said.
“It is time the international community, especially the influential powers, realized that the Houthi militia is a terrorist organization that is ruling the people through the force of arms. All means should be used to save the Yemeni people from this nightmare,” he stressed.
He warned Yemen’s situation could explode further and worsen humanitarian crisis. “All means should be tackled for the Yemeni people to get rid of this black nightmare,” he said.
The UAE is a key member of the mostly Gulf Arab alliance that sees the Houthis as a proxy of Iran.
Ahmed Ali, the powerful former military commander of Yemen’s elite Republican Guards, appeared to have been groomed to succeed his father, and he may be the family’s last chance to win back influence.
The whereabouts of Saleh’s other key relatives, who had led six days of street battles against the Houthis in the capital Sanaa before their rout on Monday, were unknown.
The Houthi leader, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, reached out to Saleh’s political party and said his movement had no quarrel with it, underscoring the influence Saleh’s allies still have in Yemen.
The Houthis moved to cement their grip on the capital Tuesday.
Residents reported a few minor clashes between the Houthis and Saleh supporters late on Monday in southern districts which had been loyal to the slain strongman.
But there was no repetition of the heavy fighting that had rocked Sanaa for the five previous nights. New checkpoints manned by militias sprung up across Sanaa as their leaders hailed their control of the capital.
“We declare the end of security operations and the stabilization of the situation,” senior Houthi official Saleh Al-Sammad told the terrorists’ Almasirah television channel late on Monday.
Al-Sammad said he had ordered the security forces to “take steps against the saboteurs and all those who collaborated with them.”
The capital was awash with rumors of widespread arrests of suspected Saleh supporters in the army and the militia regime.
The former strongman retained the loyalty of some of the best-equipped units of the army after he was forced to step down as president in 2012. The Houthis called a mass rally for Tuesday afternoon to celebrate their “foiling of the plot.”
Saleh was forced to step down in 2012, after his forces waged a bloody crackdown on peaceful Arab Spring-inspired protests calling for his ouster.
The 75-year-old had survived a civil war, rebellion in the north, an Al-Qaeda insurgency in the south and a June 2011 bomb attack on his palace that wounded him badly.
Relatives of Yasser Al-Awadi, deputy secretary-general of Saleh’s General People’s Congress party (GPC) who was reported to have been killed by the Houthis on Monday, told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV he was safe but GPC Secretary-General Araf Al-Zouka had died in the Houthi attack on Saleh’s convoy.
In the southern city of Aden, where the internationally recognized government is based, residents set off fireworks and expressed joy.
Saleh’s legacy is mixed. He is still loved in much of the north and many supporters will bear a grudge toward his killers. Some feared Saleh’s death would only create more instability in Yemen.
“We expect things will get worse for us. This will be the beginning of a new conflict and more bloodshed. The war will not end soon,” said Aswan Abdu Khalid, an academic at the psychology department at the University of Aden.
Yemen’s war has led to what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The world body says millions of people may die in one of the worst famines of modern times, caused by warring parties blocking food supplies.
The death of Saleh, who once compared ruling Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, deepens the complexity of the multisided war.
Much is likely to depend on the future allegiances of his loyalists.
Arab League rings alarm bells over Houthi menace
Arab League rings alarm bells over Houthi menace
UN rights chief Shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
