Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed in the capital Sanaa, dealing a blow to hopes of an end to the country’s protracted conflict.
Saleh died after days of intense street fighting between his forces and Houthi rebels, a senior aide to Saleh told CNN.
CNN has also seen footage and video that appeared to show Saleh’s dead body. The images could not be independently verified.
Sanaa’s Houthi-controlled Interior Ministry announced Saleh’s death in a statement. “The militias of treason are finished and their leader has been killed,” the statement said.
His death comes two days after Saleh announced he was parting ways with his former Houthi allies, and that he wanted to “turn the page” on relations with the Saudi-led coalition that launched a military intervention in Yemen in 2015. The coalition welcomed the move and granted Saleh’s forces air support in fierce battles that later transpired.
Blow to peace
His death deals a blow to hopes of peace in Yemen’s protracted conflict, and seems likely instead to inflame what has become a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which backs the Houthis.
“Despite what may have seemed like a dramatic victory for Saleh, the Houthis fought back and they fought back hard,” said Yemen analyst at the European Council of Foreign relations and former resident of Sanaa, Adam Baron.
“What you’re seeing now is that the Houthis are potentially poised to really completely consolidate power in Yemen … this makes a peace deal less possible,” he added.
The United Nations on Saturday urged all factions “to urgently come to the negotiations table and to engage in the peace process.”
“We reiterate our position that the political solution is the only way out of a prolonged conflict in Yemen,” Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement.
The former Yemeni president’s defection seemed to signal a breakthrough in the more than two-year war, potentially breaking a stalemate that has sustained the fighting.
But it triggered major upheaval in Sanaa, where Saleh lives. Residents of the Yemeni capital, home to some 5 million people, say that the last 24 hours marked the deadliest of Yemen’s war. Incessant street battles and explosions extended across the city, according to residents, as schools and hospitals shut their doors.
Read more at CNN
