An internal feud has erupted within the Sunni front that controls southern Yemen. Dozens killed and hundreds wounded. The population is increasingly pushed to the brink.
Amid suicide bombings and a population pushed to the brink, a new front has opened in the war that has been tearing Yemen apart for three years. The Sunni bloc fighting the Houthi rebels and controlling the south of the country has in fact split between those who have remained loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and the separatists who are instead calling on the local government to step down.
As a result, clashes between the former allies in the south of the country have been multiplying for several days, intertwined with attacks by Islamist militants. Fourteen soldiers were killed on the morning of Tuesday 30 January in Shabwa province. The attack targeted a checkpoint held by UAE-backed separatists in the city of Ataq. According to anonymous sources cited by the AFP news agency, responsibility for the attack is attributed to extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda. Eyewitnesses described a suicide bomber who drove a car bomb into the checkpoint and blew himself up, followed immediately by armed men opening fire on the soldiers.
The province where the attack took place is controlled by the government of President Hadi, who is in turn backed by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which has been present in Yemen since 2015 with the aim of suppressing, in the north, the revolt of the Houthi Shia rebels. The latter, however, have seized vast northern regions of the country, including the capital Sana'a, where former president Ali Abdallah Saleh was killed last 4 December.
Meanwhile, in the southern regions, the internal feud between separatists and loyalists has turned since Sunday 28 January into a bitter armed conflict. International sources report at least 36 dead and more than a hundred wounded in the port city of Aden, Yemen's second most important city. On Sunday, an ultimatum issued by the Southern Transitional Council — the separatists' decision-making body, which had demanded the dismissal of Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher — expired. The government, for its part, described the situation as a "coup attempt".
Meanwhile, also in Aden, the population is increasingly pushed to the brink. The state is unable to ensure basic services: schools and hospitals are in chaos. A sixty-year-old fisherman interviewed by French radio station France Info spoke of an "impossible life: everything costs exorbitant amounts now, our national currency has no value any more. There are no more laws, no more institutions. We can't go on."
The broadcaster also reports "the city's streets overrun by mountains of rubbish, where adults and children rummage in search of food". Hunger is already a reality in the north controlled by the Houthis, which is subject to a harsh embargo by the Saudis. For this reason, large numbers of refugees have left the capital Sana'a in recent months, relocating to Aden.
A report by television channel Yemen Today showed an entire family who had starved to death in their own home. The situation has become so dire that it is persuading many people to join the Houthi rebel militias, in order to earn enough to feed their relatives and friends. This further fuels a war that looks set to continue for a very long time, on an ever more complex chessboard.
