Yemen’s Prez flees his house in Aden

Sanaa, March 25

Yemen’s embattled President fled his palace in Aden for an undisclosed location today as Shia rebels offered cash bounty for his capture and arrested his defence minister.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi left just hours after the rebels’ own television station said they seized an air base where US troops and Europeans advised the country in its fight against Al-Qaida militants.

That air base is only 60 km away from Aden, the port city where Hadi had established a temporary capital.

The advance of the Shiite rebels, empowered by backing of the ousted Yemeni autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh’s loyalists, threatens to plunge the Arab world’s poorest country into a civil war that could draw in its Gulf neighbours. Already, Hadi has asked the United Nations to authorise a foreign military intervention in the country.

Witnesses said they saw a convoy of presidential vehicles today leaving Hadi’s palace, located at the top of a hill in Aden overlooking the Arabian Sea.

Presidential officials said Hadi was in an operations room overseeing his forces’ response. They declined to say where that facility was located. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yemen’s Foreign Minister Riad Yassin told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV satellite news network that he officially made a request to the Arab League today to send a military force to intervene against Houthis. Yassin is attending the Arab Summit due to take place in Egypt at the end of the week. — AP

India asks its nationals to leave fragile Yemen

• With growing instability in Yemen, India on Wednesday issued an advisory to Indian nationals in the Arab country asking them to consider leaving voluntarily by the "earliest available" commercial flight.
• Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin, addressing a media briefing here, said: "We urge and advise all Indian nationals who are resident in Yemen to consider leaving on voluntary basis by the earliest available commercial flight.".