Al Qaeda in Yemen Seizes Airport and Oil Terminal

 DOWAAN, Yemen — Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen took control of a major airport and an oil export terminal in the southern part of the country on Thursday. The gains were the latest signs of the resurgence of the group, which seized the nearby city of Al Mukalla in early April.

Local officials said that fighters belonging to the group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, took control of the Riyan Airport and a nearby military base outside Al Mukalla, the fifth-largest city in Yemen. The group also seized the Dhabah oil terminal on the Arabian Sea coast, a building that Yemeni officials said the group had tried to capture before.

Al Qaeda is capitalizing on the expanding multisided war in Yemen and the collapse of its government to carve out territory for itself. When they stormed Al Mukalla, the capital of Hadhramaut Province, they seized government buildings, looted the central bank office and freed hundreds of inmates from prison, including a senior leader of the group.

Al Qaeda’s traditional foes in Yemen are largely in disarray or distracted by other fighting. Military units have melted away or put up little resistance as Al Qaeda has advanced. The Houthis, a militia movement from northern Yemen that is considered Al Qaeda’s most determined foe, have been preoccupied with battles against rival militias across the country, and their fighters have been battered by aerial attack from the Saudi-led Arab military coalition, which is trying to restore the exiled government to power.

Photo

Saudi Arabia has focused on crippling the Houthis, leaving Al Qaeda all but unopposed around Al Mukalla, though the extremist group was a dealt a rare setback this week when a top advocate and several other members were killed in an American drone strike.

With growing alarm over the extremists’ gains and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Yemen, Khaled Bahah, a top official in exiled government, called on Thursday for the Houthi movement to halt its military offensive as a condition for opening peace talks.

Speaking in Saudi Arabia, where the government has taken refuge, Mr. Bahah said the “language of reason and dialogue must be given priority.” But first, he said, the Houthis must halt their attacks and “stop tampering with the destiny of the nation and destroying its institutions.”

Mr. Bahah was appointed vice president on Sunday by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled from Yemen in March, shortly before Saudi Arabia began its military offensive.

Mr. Bahah, who served as Yemen’s last prime minister, is widely viewed as a conciliatory figure among the country’s increasingly fractured and polarized political elite. His appointment as vice president was seen as an attempt to bridge the divides fueling the war, and to provide alternative leadership to that of Mr. Hadi, who lacks any significant base of support in Yemen.

But a senior Houthi official, responding to Mr. Bahah’s comments on Thursday, told Reuters that the Saudi-led bombing campaign had to stop “immediately and without conditions.”

The political deadlock has prompted increasingly dire assessments from international aid agencies about the toll on civilians in Yemen, a country that must import nearly all of its food. The Saudi-led military coalition has imposed an air and sea blockade, which, along with the fighting, have caused critical shortages of food and electricity in many cities, including Sana, the capital, and Aden, a southern port city, which has been gripped by fierce urban warfare for weeks.

The World Food Program said in a statement on Thursday that it would distribute food to 105,000 displaced people around Aden over the next few days, but that in the deteriorating security situation, it was “struggling to reach people.”

“Two weeks of escalating violence have left many Yemenis hungry, trapped inside their cities and villages with food stocks running low,” the agency said in its statement.

But another United Nations agency, the World Health Organization, said on Thursday that it had succeeded in delivering a shipment of more than 18 tons of badly needed medicines and surgical supplies to Sana.

NY Times