Yemen’s ousted president challenges Houthi ‘Coup’

President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi is heading to Aden, where his supporters refuse to recognise the council installed by the Houthi militia to replace him.
President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi is heading to Aden, where his supporters refuse to recognise the council installed by the Houthi militia to replace him.
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AFP, Aden :
Yemen’s Western-backed president fled south to friendly territory on Saturday, challenging a grab for power by the Houthi militia that had kept him under house arrest for weeks, calling it a coup.
An aide said presidential guards had managed to sneak Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi out of his residence in Sanaa, and he later made it to the main southern city of Aden.
His supporters there have refused to recognize the authority of the presidential council installed by the Houthi militia to replace him.
Hadi issued a statement, signed as president, saying all measures taken by the Houthis since they seized Sanaa in September and began a push to extend their control further afield were “null and illegitimate”.The aide said Hadi will call on parliament to meet in Aden, as powerful tribes in the southern provinces of Marib, Jawaf and Baida urged him to declare Sanaa an “occupied city”, a tribal source said.
He said Hadi “remains the legitimate president and that he resigned under pressure from Houthis”.
Hadi called on world powers to “reject the coup”.
The president’s resignation did not receive the parliamentary approval required under the constitution before the Houthis unilaterally dissolved all government institutions on February 6.
Hadi travelled overland in a convoy of dozens of vehicles, passing through Yemen’s third city Taez, a top security official in Aden said.
A source in the presidential force said Houthi gunmen at Hadi’s residence were tricked into looting a vehicle carrying arms while Hadi was sneaked out of a back gate.
The aide insisted that Hadi left “without an arrangement or even informing any of the political parties”. The security official in Aden told AFP that Hadi was staying in a presidential residence in the port city’s Khormaksar diplomatic district.
The Houthis, whose power base is in the mainly Shiite northern highlands, overran Sanaa unopposed in September.
Last month, they seized the presidential palace and besieged Hadi’s residence, prompting him to offer to resign.
The Houthis have pushed their advance south and west of Sanaa into mainly Sunni areas, where they have met with fierce resistance from tribesmen and Al Qaeda.
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