Shiite rebels call for Yemen offensive; US troops evacuate

Associated Press

ADEN, YEMEN

Yemen’s Shiite rebels issued a call to arms Saturday to battle forces loyal to the country’s embattled president, as U.S. troops were evacuating a southern air base crucial to America’s drone strike program after al-Qaida militants seized a nearby city.

The turmoil comes as Yemen battles al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the target of the drone program, and faces a purported affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings killing at least 137 people Friday.

All these factors could push the Arab world’s most- impoverished country, united only in the 1990s, back toward civil war.

The Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, swept into Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September and now control it and nine of the country’s 21 provinces. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a one-time prisoner of the Houthis in his own home, escaped last month and installed himself in Aden, declaring it the temporary capital amid the Houthi insurrection.

As the threat of civil war grew, the U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting for today to discuss the Yemen crisis.

Meanwhile Saturday, U.S. troops including Special Forces commandos were evacuating from the al-Annad air base in southern Yemen, Yemeni security and military officials said. The officials did not say whether the troops had left the country.