The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC)’s militias raised the state of readiness in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, after they rejected the return of the head of the Riyadh-Formed Presidential Council Rashad Al-Alimi, Southern Medias sources reported on Monday.
The sources said that the STC forces summoned all its members, stopped vacations and deployed dozens of militants and created checkpoints in the streets of the city, especially in the vicinity of the airport, refineries, port and headquarters of the STC.
The sources added, that the presidential storm brigades’ forces stationed at the gates of the Al-Ma’ashiq Palace had set up checkpoints on the roads leading to it.
The STC troops have erected two new checkpoints near the Saudi-led coalition camp in the city of al-Shaab in Al Buraiqeh District west of Aden, where Saudi forces are stationed, the sources said.
The security alert prompted the head of government, loyal to the coalition to arrange to leave Aden, especially after the STC openly accused him of obstructing the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement, which has failed since its signing on November 5, 2019.
Those actions came as the Saudi-led coalition forces began a series of dropping the positions of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) factions at the northern gate of the city of Aden.
Sources familiar with the matter revealed that units of the joint forces led by Tariq Saleh on the western coast stormed STC’s positions in the strategic Ras al-Ara in Lahj, in a move to evacuate the STC’s factions from the province.
This came, a few hours after the so-called Saudi-formed “Presidential Transitional Council” handed over the coalition’s plan to merge the southern factions with the Saudi-backed government’s Defense and Interior ministries, as part of a plan to dismantle the STC factions.
The sources indicated that the STC factions informed Tariq’s groups to quickly leave the area within a maximum period of 24 hours, threatening to bombard them with artillery.
