Houthi-backed forces are trying to seize the Dar Saad district and the airport in the southern port city of Aden, Hussein al-Wahishi, who heads fighters backing President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi, said by telephone. Houthis and troops loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh are advancing toward Aden from Abyan province, Al-Azal television channel reported, without saying where it got the information.
Yemen’s escalating conflict, which cuts along sectarian lines, has escalated the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran and further destabilized a region that holds more than half the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia, Hadi’s chief ally, is heading a coalition of 10 Sunni-led nations attacking the Houthis, who have seized much of the country and drove Hadi out of the capital, Sana’a, last month.
If Houthi-backed forces continue to make advances in two weeks, “the coalition will have to reassess what they are doing,” Ibrahim Sharqieh Frehat, Conflict Resolution Professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said by telephone. “They shouldn’t take for granted that an air war and then ground forces will achieve their objectives.”
The Saudis say Iran is behind the rebel gains, while the Houthis accuse Hadi and his Gulf backers of collaborating with al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch.

Sana’a Attacked

Coalition airstrikes also targeted bases of Republican Guard forces loyal to Saleh in Sana’a throughout the night, said Fuad Ali, a resident of the capital, by telephone. Large explosions shook the city, he said.
At least 40 Houthis were killed in clashes in the southern province of Shabwa on Sunday, while the Saudi-led coalition bombed missile launchers near the port of al-Mukha on the Bab al-Mandab strait, a key shipping route, Ali Mohammed, a soldier at an air defense military camp, said by telephone. Hadi’s forces said Saturday they regained control of the international airport in Aden from the rebels.
Coalition planes on bombing raids over Aden targeted Houthi air defense systems, including surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery, as well as ammunition depots, Ahmed Asseri, a Saudi military officer and spokesman for the coalition, said at a press briefing on Sunday.
“We will set the conditions necessary to allow the president and his government to run the country,” Asseri said.

Escaping Aden

Hadi fled to Aden last month after escaping Houthi house arrest in the capital. He left the city clandestinely last week, reappearing at an Arab League summit in Egypt on Saturday before leaving with Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud for the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
The Houthis have formed an alliance with deposed former leader Saleh, who has called for the “barbaric” airstrikes to end. He said only talks under the Arab League or United Nations would resolve the crisis.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t rule out a ground invasion, and has “sufficient forces in the current coalition, if need be, to go into Yemen,” its ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir, said in a television interview on Sunday. “But right now, the objective is being achieved through an air campaign.”

Unified Force

Arab leaders meeting in Egypt agreed to form a unified military force, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Sunday after a two-day summit dominated by discussion of Yemen. Hadi attended, urging the Arab coalition to maintain its bombing campaign until the Houthis surrender and disarm. He called the Houthis puppets of Iran.
The coalition needs to “engage in a political process, and a process of negotiations of talking to the other party,” Frehat, a Yemen expert, said.
Asseri said the rebels have received munitions, armaments and financial assistance from the Iranians. Saudi Arabia has found hundreds of storage facilities “with ammunition and armaments in houses, among civilians, on the Saudi border and all over the country,” he said.
The Houthis say they operate independently of Iran and represent only their own group’s interests. They follow the Zaidi branch of Shiite Islam, like about 40 percent of Yemen’s people, and are concentrated in the northern half of a country reunified in 1990 after decades of division into two states.
The Houthis may have as many as 30,000 regular fighters, Asseri said, giving what he said was a rough estimate.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mohammed Hatem in Sana’a at mhatem1@bloomberg.net; Glen Carey in Riyadh at gcarey8@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net Caroline Alexander, Karl Maier