Yemen’s internationally recognised government has declared a nighttime curfew, starting on Monday, in the key southern port city of Aden in an attempt to push back against recent incursions by al-Qaida and other Islamic militant groups, the city’s governor has said.
According to the Aden governor, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the curfew will be in place between 8pm and 5am every night for an unspecified period.
The measure came after government forces retook the port after clashes with militants who had seized it over the weekend. Al-Qaida and other militants have been using the port for lucrative smuggling operations.
However, it remained unclear how well the curfew could be enforced since the Yemeni forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states that is supported by the US, are stretched thin as they battle the Shia rebels known as Houthis.
Yemen’s al-Qaida branch has long been seen by Washington as the most potent affiliate of the extremist network and has been linked to a number of attempted attacks on the US. The group, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has captured much of Yemen’s sprawling Hadramawt province and its capital, Mukalla, as well as the capital of southern Abyan province, Zinjibar and the town of Jaʿār.
The group, along with militants linked to Islamic State, have exploited the chaos of the country’s civil war to stage significant land grabs and expand its footprint in southern Yemen.
According to the UN, the war in Yemen has killed at least 5,884 people since March, when fighting escalated after the Saudi-led coalition began launching airstrikes targeting the rebels.
The conflict pits the internationally recognised government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against the Houthi rebels, allied with a former president.
The two sides launched peace negotiations in December in Switzerland, and a truce was declared on the ground, but government forces and the rebels ignored it. That truce formally ended over the weekend.
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