Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday its national security is a red line, hours after an airstrike on Yemen’s southern port of Mukalla by a Saudi-led coalition, and gave United Arab Emirates (UAE) forces 24 hours to leave in Riyadh’s strongest language against Abu Dhabi yet. As tension between the two Gulf oil powers reaches boiling port, the coalition struck what it described as foreign military support to UAE-backed southern separatists, while the head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed presidential council set the deadline. Yemen’s presidential council head, Rashad al-Alimi, also cancelled a defence pact with the UAE, the state news agency said, and accused the UAE in a televised speech of fuelling internal strife in Yemen.
“Unfortunately it has been definitively confirmed the United Arab Emirates pressured and directed the Southern Transitional Council (STC) to undermine and rebel against the authority of the state through military escalation,” he said. Saudi Arabia urged the Emiratis to comply with the demand. The UAE’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This month’s offensive pitted the STC against Saudi-supported Yemeni government troops, bringing the allies closer than ever to all-out conflict in Yemen, mired in civil war since 2014. The UAE was a member of the Saudi-led coalition battling the Iran-aligned Houthi movement. In 2019 it started a drawdown of its troops in the country but remained committed to the Saudi-backed internationally recognised government.
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The limited air strike followed the weekend arrival of two ships from the UAE port of Fujairah on Saturday and Sunday without its authorisation, the coalition said. After arriving in Mukalla, the vessels disabled their tracking systems and unloaded large quantities of weapons and combat vehicles to support the STC, it said. Saudi Arabia had warned the main southern separatist group against military moves in the eastern border province of Hadramout and sought withdrawal of its forces after they claimed broad control of the south in an escalation after years of stalemate.
The coalition said the Mukalla port strike caused no casualties or collateral damage, Saudi state media said. Two sources told Reuters the strike targeted the dock where the cargo of the two ships was unloaded.
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