ADEN: A Saudi-led coalition stepped up air strikes on Yemen’s Huthis on Wednesday as the Iran-allied armed movement tightened its grip on Sanaa a day after the son of slain former president Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed revenge for his father’s death.

Former president Saleh plunged the country deeper into turmoil last week by switching allegiances after years helping the Huthis win control of much of the country’s north including the capital. He was killed in an attack on his convoy on Monday.

The pro-Huthi Al Masirah television station said on Wednesday Saudi Arabia and its allies had bombed Saleh’s residence and other houses of his family members now controlled by the Huthis. Air strikes also hit northern provinces including Taiz, Hajjah, Midi and Saada, it said.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

The intervention by Saleh’s son Ahmed Ali, a former commander of the elite Republican Guard who lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates and was once seen as a successor to his father, has provided the anti-Huthi movement with a potential figurehead.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the de facto leader of the UAE, visited Ahmed Ali at his residence to offer his condolences, according to Sheikh Mohammed’s Twitter account. He posted a picture of himself sitting near Ahmed Ali.

Ahmed Ali had been widely expected to leave the UAE, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Huthis, for Yemen to help in the war amid media reports that some Saleh loyalists have been switching sides.

Many Sanaa residents were staying indoors on Wednesday out of fear of a Huthi crackdown. On Tuesday, Saleh supporters said his nephew Tareq, another top commander, and the head of his party, Aref Zouka, had both been killed.

“There’s a scary calm in the city,” said Ali, a 47-year-old businessman who declined to use his full name. “People are reporting that there are many arrests and they are trying to shoot military men and (Saleh party) members.”

Yemen’s conflict, pitting the Huthis against the Saudi-led military alliance which backs a government based in the south, has unleashed what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Proxy war

The proxy war between regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia - armed and given intelligence by the West — has killed more than 10,000 people, with more than two million displaced.

Saleh’s decision to abandon the Huthis was the most dramatic development in three years of stalemate. Top Huthi officials called it high treason backed by their Saudi enemies.

Tens of thousands of Huthi supporters staged a rally in Sanaa on Tuesday to celebrate what the Huthis had said was the defeat of a major conspiracy by Saleh, chanting slogans against Saudi Arabia and its allies.

Political sources said the Huthis had arrested dozens of Saleh’s allies and army officers affiliated with his party in and around the city. Several had been killed in the raids.

On Wednesday, several dozen women gathered in a main Sanaa square holding Saleh’s portrait and demanding his body be handed over for burial, but they were forcibly dispersed by Huthi security forces, eyewitnesses said.

The Huthi-controlled interior ministry distributed a video of dozens of seated barefoot men it said were pro-Saleh fighters detained in one of its party headquarters.

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders appealed for the release of 41 journalists it said have been held “hostage” by the group since it overran the headquarters of the Saleh-owned al-Yemen al-Youm TV station on Saturday.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2017