UN chief urges for resumption of imports into Yemen as 'millions at risk'

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged warring parties in Yemen to stop all ground and air assaults and called for a resumption of all commercial imports into the country because "millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death."

Clashes between fighters loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis first erupted last week when Saleh accused the rebels of storming his giant mosque in Sanaa and attacking his nephew, the powerful commander of the special forces, Tarek Saleh.

Five days of bombings and heavy gunfire have underscored the unraveling of the already fragile alliance between Saleh and Houthis. 

The two sides joined ranks three years ago and swept across the capital, Sanaa, forcing the country's internationally recognised president to flee the country and seek military intervention led by Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Yemen's capital, Sanaa, local media said, lending support to Saleh after he signalled he was abandoning his support of the Iran-aligned Houthis - a shift that could pave the way to end three years of war. 

TRT World's Philip Owira reports.

Iranian-backed Houthis from Yemen claimed that they had launched a missile towards an under-construction nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates. 

Emirati officials denied the report.

Sanaa street clashes

Snipers took over rooftops in residential areas, tanks deployed and militiamen set up checkpoints Sunday across the Yemeni capital, where fighting forced families to hunker down indoors in anticipation of more violence.

After months of political and military stalemate, the street battles between Saleh's forces and the Houthi militiamen have marked a turning point in the conflict. 

The two sides had been enemies before the six-year-war that began in 2004 when Saleh was a president. Their alliance, in the eyes of many Yemenis, was doomed to fail given their stark differences.

Over the past 48 hours, in a series of surprise announcements, all of Yemen's political players spoke about turning a new page and unifying against the Houthis — a new alliance that appeared to have been in the making for some time as the Shia rebels have accused Saleh of working against them.

The Houthis, who descended from their northern enclave and seized Yemen's capital in 2014 with the help of Saleh's forces, are now becoming isolated in the face of popular anger.

Southern Sanaa and northern areas bombings

Bombings and sporadic gunfire rocked the southern part of Sanaa on Sunday, where Houthi militants stormed Saleh's Yemen Today TV network, beat up its director, and held over 40 journalists and crew members inside the building, Yemen's Press Syndicate said.

Many state institutions — including the airport, state TV headquarters and the official news agency — remained under the control of the Houthis, despite earlier reports that Saleh's forces had taken them over.

A southern Sanaa district that houses the residential compound of Saleh and his family was surrounded during the intense clashes.

The fighting also spread to northern areas. In Amran, armed tribesmen tried to cut the road between the provinces of Saada, a Houthi stronghold, and Jawf, sparking clashes in which scores of tribesmen were killed and wounded, witnesses said. 

In Mehwat, a province in northern Yemen, sporadic fighting also broke out between Saleh's supporters and the Houthis, while heavy fighting rocked the western district of Gidr in Sanaa province, where tribesmen took over military camps briefly before surrendering them to the Houthis.

Medical officials in Sanaa said nearly 75 people from both sides were killed and wounded in clashes there. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief media, did not provide a breakdown of the casualties.