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Saudi Arabia has launched an air strike on a Yemeni port, targeting what it said were shipments of weapons and combat vehicles from the United Arab Emirates destined for southern separatist forces.
The attack — Saudi Arabia’s second strike on Yemen in five days — hit sites in the port city of Mukalla and is a dramatic escalation of tensions between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi over the conflict in the war-torn Arab state.
The kingdom for the first time directly blamed the UAE for backing an offensive by the Southern Transitional Council, a southern Yemeni separatist group that triggered a crisis this month by seizing control of two strategic provinces, Hadhramaut and al-Mahra.
The Saudi foreign ministry accused the UAE of “pressuring” the STC “to conduct military operations on the southern borders of the kingdom”. It said it considered the operations a “threat” to its national security and the stability of Yemen.
“The steps taken by the UAE are considered highly dangerous, inconsistent with the principles upon which the coalition to restore legitimacy in Yemen was established, and do not serve the [Saudi-led] coalition’s purpose of achieving security and stability for Yemen,” it said.
Hadhramaut borders Saudi Arabia and is Yemen’s largest and richest region. Both Hadhramaut and al-Mahra, which borders Oman, were controlled by the Yemeni government backed by Riyadh before the STC’s advance.
The Gulf neighbours intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to fight Iran-backed Houthis, which control much of the country’s populous north. But they back factions that often compete with each other.
The latest crisis has laid bare a deepening rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, traditional allies that have become increasingly at odds over conflicts in Yemen and Sudan.
The STC launched its offensive three weeks after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman raised concerns about the Sudanese civil war with US President Donald Trump during his visit to the White House.
Some analysts suspected the two events were linked, with the UAE annoyed that Prince Mohammed had raised the role of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the Sudanese conflict.
The UAE’s role in Sudan has come under increasing scrutiny because it is alleged to have supplied weapons to the RSF, which has faced accusations of genocide. Abu Dhabi denies it arms the RSF.
Saudi Arabia is considered a supporter of the Sudanese Armed Forces, the RSF’s main rival.
In Yemen, the UAE-backed STC is the most powerful southern group and wants the south to become a separate state, as it was before Yemen’s unification in 1990.
A Saudi military spokesperson described the air strike on Mukalla as “limited”.
“The ships’ crew had disabled the tracking devices aboard the vessels, and unloaded a large amount of weapons and combat vehicles in support of the Southern Transitional Council’s forces,” Major General Turki al-Maliki said in a statement published by the Saudi Press Agency.
Following Tuesday’s air strike, Yemen’s Saudi-backed government called on all Emirati forces to leave Yemen within 24 hours and said it was cancelling a defence agreement with the UAE over its support for the STC.
It also declared a state of emergency for 90 days and issued a 72-hour ban on all border crossings in territory it holds, as well as entries to airports and seaports, except those allowed by the Saudi-led coalition.
“Unfortunately, it has been definitively confirmed that the United Arab Emirates exerted pressure and directed the [Southern] Transitional Council to undermine the state’s authority and rebel against it through military escalation,” Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Saudi-supported Presidential Leadership Council in Yemen, said in a statement.
Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen analyst at Chatham House, said the statements from Saudi Arabia and Alimi “mark a critical turning point”.
“These actions suggest that the situation is entering a particularly volatile and dangerous phase,” he said.
He added that the Houthis are likely to view the growing rift between its adversaries “with considerable advantage”.
Saudi state television aired footage recorded by surveillance aircraft that appeared to show the armoured vehicles moving from the Mukalla port to a staging area. There were no casualties in the air strike, state media said.
The UAE did not immediately comment on the air strike or the call to withdraw its forces from Yemen.
The STC said it launched its offensive after local factions halted crude production in Hadhramaut, the main source of oil revenue for the southern authorities. The offensive also aimed to combat Islamist extremists and to prevent weapons smuggling to the Houthis, the STC said.
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