Saudi Arabia bombs Yemen over shipment of weapons for separatists that arrived from UAE

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia bombed the port city of Mukalla in Yemen on Tuesday over what it described as a shipment of weapons for a separatist force there that arrived from the United Arab Emirates. The UAE did not immediately acknowledge the strike.

The attack signals a new escalation in tensions between the kingdom and the separatist forces of the Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the Emirates. It also further strains ties between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which had been backing competing sides in Yemen’s decadelong war against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

A military statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the strikes, which it said came after ships arrived there from Fujairah, a port city on the UAE’s eastern coast.

“Given the danger and escalation posed by these weapons, which threaten security and stability, the Coalition Air Forces conducted a limited military operation this morning targeting weapons and combat vehicles unloaded from the two ships at the port,” it said.

It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any casualties from the strike. The Saudi military said it conducted the attack overnight to make sure “no collateral damage occurred.”

The UAE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP.

The attack likely targeted a ship identified by analysts as the Greenland, a roll-on, roll-off vessel flagged out of St. Kitts. Tracking data analyzed by the AP showed the vessel had been in Fujairah on Dec. 22 and arrived in Mukalla on Sunday.

Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert and the founder of the Basha Report, a risk advisory firm, cited social media videos which purported to show new armored vehicles rolling through Mukalla after the ship’s arrival. The ship’s owners, based in Dubai, could not be immediately reached.

Mukalla is in Yemen’s Hadramout governorate, which the Council had seized in recent days. The port city is some 480 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of Aden, which has been the seat of power for anti-Houthi forces in Yemen after the rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, back in 2014.

The strike in Mukalla comes after Saudi Arabia targeted the Council in airstrikes Friday that analysts described as a warning for the separatists to halt their advance and leave the governorates of Hadramout and Mahra.

The Council had pushed out forces there affiliated with the Saudi-backed National Shield Forces, another group in the coalition fighting the Houthis.

Those aligned with the Council have increasingly flown the flag of South Yemen, which was a separate country from 1967-1990. Demonstrators have been rallying for days to support political forces calling for South Yemen to secede again from Yemen.

The actions by the separatists have put pressure on the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which maintain close relations and are members of the OPEC oil cartel, but also have competed for influence and international business in recent years.

There has also been an escalation of violence in Sudan, another nation on the Red Sea, where the kingdom and the Emirates support opposing forces in that country’s ongoing war.