Jan 8 (Reuters) – The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said the head of Yemen’s southern separatists, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, left for Somaliland by boat and then boarded an aircraft to Somalia’s Mogadishu.
The plane that took him to Mogadishu from Somaliland “under the supervision of UAE officers” waited for an hour before flying to a military airport in Abu Dhabi, the coalition said in a statement early on Thursday, without specifying whether Zubaidi was still on board.
The coalition’s statement came a day after it said Zubaidi, leader of the Southern Transitional Council, had failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks and that his fate was unclear, clouding efforts to contain a military escalation that erupted last month.
The fast-moving crisis in Yemen’s south has created a rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two most powerful countries in the oil-rich Gulf, fracturing a coalition headed by Yemen’s internationally recognised government that is fighting the Iran-backed Houthis.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE first intervened in Yemen after the Houthis seized the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2014.
The UAE joined the Saudi-backed coalition the following year in support of the internationally recognised government.
The STC was set up in 2017 with UAE backing and eventually joined the government coalition, which controls southern and eastern Yemen. Last month STC forces suddenly seized swathes of territory, shifting the balance of power and pitting Saudi Arabia against the UAE.
(Reporting by Hatem Maher; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Kate Mayberry)
