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Armed forces loyal to Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi have been on high alert in Aden following the Houthis’ takeover of Taiz city on Sunday, taking up positions along the governorate’s borders in anticipation of an assault.
Popular committee members and military forces have been gathering in the Karesh area of Aden governorate, near the border with Lahj, according to popular committee member Mohammad Herbaj.
An affiliate of the Islamic State that had not previously carried out any major attacks claimed responsibility for coordinated suicide strikes on Zaydi Shiite mosques here that killed more than 130 people during Friday Prayer, bringing to Yemen the kind of deadly sectarian fighting that has ripped apart Syria and Iraq.
The bombings, apparently carried out by Sunni extremists against Shiite places of worship, threatened to propel the conflict toward the kind of unrestrained sectarian bloodletting that Yemen had so far avoided.
A senior government official says warplanes targeted the palace of embattled Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in the southern city of Aden.
The official, who is one of Hadi’s aides, told The Associated Press that Hadi was in not in the palace at the time of Thursday’s strikes and has been moved to a “safe location.”
The warplanes were flown by forces loyal to Shiite Houthi rebels and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the official said. He said three strikes were carried out but did not damage the palace, hitting in nearby mountains and the sea.
Iraq’s huge offensive to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State group was stalled on Tuesday by a slew of bombs and the several hundred jihadists holding out in the city.
While Iraqi troops and militia were able to surround the jihadists in Tikrit with relative ease, ousting them from the city’s streets has proved far harder.
Scores of terrorists linked to the al-Nusra Front and the ISIS have been killed in airstrikes carried out by Syrian warplanes outside Idlib, Der Ezzour, Hassaka, Homs, Hama, Quneitra, Aleppo, Daraa and Damascus.
According to the official news agency (SANA), army units eliminated dozens of al-Nusra front terrorists, some of them were of Jordanian, Saudi and Uzbekistani nationals, in al-Tamane’a, Saraqeb, Taftinaz, Abo Duhur, Kafr Rohin, Hafsarjeh, Bennish and Silia towns in Idlib countryside.